•     • 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 


OTHER  BOOKS  BV 

REGINALD  WRIGHT  KAUFFMAN 

9  9 

THE    HOUSE   OF    BONDAGE 

WHAT    IS    SOCIALISM  ? 
THE   GIRL   THAT    GOES   WRONG 

THE    WAY   OF   PEACE 
THE  THINGS  THAT  ARE  CESAR'S 


THE 

SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 


REGINALD  WRIGHT   KAUFFMAN 


They  peradventure  err  seeking  God. ' ' 

THE  BOOK  OF  THE  WISDOM  OF  SOLOMON,   XIII  :  6 


%JNEW  YORK 
MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

1912 


Copyright  1912,  by 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


All  Rights  Reserved 
Second  Printing,  April,  1912 


TO   MY    WIFE 
RUTH  KAUFFMAN 

AND 
TO    ALL    OTHER    WOMEN 


•*  250622 


NOTE 

IF  the  purpose  of  this  novel  is  not  clear  to  the 
serious  reader,  then  nothing  that  I  might  say  in  a 
foreword  would  make  it  clear.  If  the  characters,  to 
whom  I  have  been  merely  Chorus,  do  not  of  them- 
selves present  their  problem  and  its  need  of  solution, 
then  either  I  err  in  the  manner  of  my  interpretation 
or  my  readers  err  in  their  manner  of  approach.  The 
so-called  sex-question  is,  as  at  present  distorted,  an 
economic  question  because  disproportionate  pay  pre- 
vents contented  marriages,  drives  men  to  the  brothel 
and  women  to  the  street,  and  robs  both  men  and 
women  of  their  right  to  happiness.  It  is  an  educa- 
tional question  because  our  modern  attitude  toward 
marriage,  an  economic  attitude,  has  created  a  conven- 
tion of  silence  that  fits  our  children  for  disaster.  It 
is  a  moral  question  because  its  economic  origin  sets 
one  value  upon  continence  in  man  and  another  value 
upon  continence  in  woman.  Not  until  we  have  faced 
the  subject  with  opened  eyes  can  we  hope  for  even  an 
approximate  realization  of  that  which  now  stares  at 
us,  in  its  abstract  as  well  as  its  concrete  form,  on  city 
pavements  and  in  country  lanes. 

REGINALD  WRIGHT  KAUFFMAN. 

NEW  YORK  CITY, 

z 8th  February,  igia. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 


"T'M  sure,"  said  Mrs.  Thomas  Barnes,  "I  don't 
know  what's  come  over  the  young  folks  nowa- 
days." She  sighed  wistfully  and,  as  one  that 
fears  the  expression  of  opinion,  ventured  a  timid 
glance  across  the  table  at  her  husband.  "  Seems  to 
me,"  she  added,  "  people  didn't  behave  so  when  I 
was  a  girl." 

She  spoke  with  that  air  of  assumed  age  which  she 
conceived  to  be  fitting  in  a  married  woman,  albeit  a 
newly-married  one ;  and  yet  those  citizens  of  the  little 
town  of  Americus  who  remember  Sarah  Barnes  as 
she  was  in  1871,  say  that,  at  twenty-eight,  she  looked 
no  more  than  twenty. 

In  one  of  the  many  drawers  of  the  brass-bound 
desk  that  his  grandfather  made  with  his  own  hands, 
Daniel  Barnes  has  still,  somewhere,  an  ambrotype 
of  his  mother  and  father,  taken  toward  the  end  of 
their  long  engagement,  and  this  certainly  corroborates 
the  memory  of  their  fellow-townsmen.  It  shows  a 
wasp-waisted  girl,  seated  rather  stiffly,  her  large 
hands,  the  legacy  of  pioneer  stock,  clasped  in  her  lap. 
Her  face,  in  spite  of  its  prominent  cheekbones,  which 
the  forgotten  pho.fcographer  has  touched  with  a  now 
fading  pink,  is  a  delicate  face.  The  hair,  accurately 
parted  in  the  center  and  curling  in  painfully  contrived 


OF  SILENCE 


ringlets  about  her  neck,  covers  a  head  well  shaped. 
The  mouth,  though  large,  is  not  too  strong  for  the 
taste  of  that  day;  the  nose  is  of  the  sort  that  the  "  an- 
nuals "  loved  to  describe  as  "  regular  ";  and  the  eyes 
are  round  and  diffident.  Men  say  that  her  eyes  were 
blue;  that  her  coloring  was  beautiful;  that  she  was 
much  admired  for  these  things  and  more  admired 
because  she  was  modest  and  docile,  because  she  was 
quiet  and  unassuming,  because  she  was  a  womanly 
woman. 

Judged  by  the  same  standard,  the  man  that,  in 
the  picture,  towers  erect  beside  her,  would  certainly 
be  accounted  a  manly  ipan.  His  knotted  hand  grips 
the  back  of  the  chair  in  a  pose  bespeaking  a  protec- 
tion in  which  ownership  is  as  inherent  as  chivalry. 
Tom  Barnes's  figure,  even  under  its  loose  clothes,  is 
seen  to  be  rawboned.  The  only  hair  upon  his  face 
is  the  beard  that  just  covers  his  chin.  His  forehead 
is  low  and  broad;  his  eyes  are  keen;  his  nose  is 
large  and  rugged;  and  his  long  upper  lip  lends  to 
his  whole  bearing  that  appearance  of  determination 
and  pride  which,  to  the  end  of  his  days,  the  citizens 
of  Americus  considered  intellectuality  and  strength. 

§2.  It  was  an  appearance  that,  at  all  events,  rarely 
forsook  him.  He  carried  it  into  his  private  life  and 
perhaps  accentuated  it  there.  Seated  now  in  a  high- 
backed  rocker,  not  even  his  fatigue  uniform  of  shirt- 
sleeves and  carpet-slippers  could  subtract  from  it. 
His  gestureless  conversation,  conducted  from  a  face 
that  did  not  alter  its  expression,  and  in  a  voice  that 
was  a  rasping  monotone,  never  descended  from  that 
eminence. 


(THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE          3 

"  You're  thinkin',"  he  said,  "  about  that  girl  o' 
Calvin  Green's." 

Tom  Barnes  was  not  in  the  habit  of  asking  his  wife 
what  was  in  her  mind :  he  told  her.  She  now,  there- 
fore, in  what  she  might  delicately  term  sympathy, 
and  others  would  call  by  a  more  honest  name,  straight- 
way began  dutifully  to  think  of  that  wrongdoer. 
She  nodded.  She  addressed  herself  to  her  husband 
as  to  one  that  knows  the  hearts  and  futures  of 
men. 

"Will  that  Fry  boy  marry  her?"  Mrs.  Barnes 
inquired. 

"Yes,"  said  Barnes;  "he'll  marry  her,  an'  most 
likely  they'll  starve  to  death." 

Husband  and  wife  were  seated  in  the  back-parlor 
of  their  square,  uncompromising  house  on  Front 
Street,  in  the  room  that,  because  it  contained  one 
cumbersome  bookcase,  they  spoke  of  as  the  library. 
Barnes's  deep-set  eyes  unseeingly  regarded  the  ordered 
leather-bound  books  upon  their  shelves :  "  The  Pil- 
grim's Progress,"  "  The  Christian  Miscellany,"  some 
pious  memoirs,  several  volumes  of  sermons  on  doc- 
trinal subjects,  and  a  work  on  ecclesiastical  polity. 

"  Starve  right  to  death,"  repeated  Barnes. 

He  had  been  reading  the  Weekly  Spy — the  Spy 
was  still  a  weekly  in  those  days — and,  having  thus 
disposed  of  the  destinies  of  Master  Fry  and  the 
criminally  inclined  daughter  of  Calvin  Green,  he  now 
returned  to  his  perusal  of  the  local  newspaper. 

Mrs.  Barnes,  who  was  making  baby-clothes,  sighed 
again  as  she  resumed  her  task. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  what's  come  over  the  young 
folks,"  she  said. 


4          iTHE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

§3.  Save  for  the  labored  ticking  of  the  clock  on 
the  slate  mantelpiece,  there  was  silence  in  the  room 
for  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  Then  Barnes  finished 
reading  the  paper  and  held  it  out  to  his  wife  across 
the  center-table  that  separated  them. 

"There  ain't  a  thing  in  this,"  he  said.  "Want 
to  see  it?" 

Mrs.  Barnes  shook  her  head. 

"  No,  thanks,"  she  answered. 

Barnes  folded  the  paper  carefully  and  laid  it  be- 
side the  flower-shaded  lamp. 

"  /  know,"  said  he. 

His  wife  looked  up  inquiringly.  She  had  no  doubt 
of  her  husband's  knowledge  upon  any  subject;  the 
only  thing  that  she  was  now  in  doubt  about  con- 
cerning him  was  what  particular  subject  he  at  present 
referred  to.  Her  fingers  fumbled  with  the  still 
sleeveless  little  linen  dress  that  lay  upon  her 
lap. 

"What?"  she  asked. 

"  I  know  what's  come  over  the  young  folks,"  said 
Barnes,  "  an'  when  we  have  our  boy,  I  mean  to  see 
it  never  comes  over  him." 

His  wife  bowed  above  her  work.  Her  cheek  was 
warmed,  but,  though  something  seemed  to  struggle 
to  her  lips,  she  did  not  at  once  reply. 

Barnes,  however,  required  no  invitation  to  express 
his  views.  He  poked  still  farther  from  him  the  has- 
sock that  was  always  provided  for  his  long-extended 
feet. 

"  The  trouble  with  children,"  he  said,  "  is  they 
haven't  got  enough  respect  nowadays.  They  don't 
respect  any  thin'.  They're  all  brought  up  to  be 


[THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE          5 

rebels  and  to  think  too  much  for  themselves.  Chil- 
dren have  got  to  be  taught  to  respect  their  elders. 
They've  got  to  be  taught  to  respect  their  parents: 
there  mustn't  be  none  o'  this  sassin'  back;  they  must 
understand  their  parents  naturally  know  more'n 
them." 

Then  Mrs.  Barnes  replied.  Not  to  express  the 
thought  that  had  come  to  her  a  moment  before;  she 
spoke  from  the  impulse  that  prompts  most  speech: 
because  this  seemed  the  proper  moment  to  say  some- 
thing. 

"  I  guess  that's  right,"  she  murmured. 

Barnes  grunted. 

"  Then,  there's  respect  for  success,"  he  resumed — 
"  for  them  as  have  made  their  own  way  in  the  world. 
We  all  seem  to  be  gettin'  away  from  that.  Just 
because  them  Trinkers  up  in  Carlisle  made  their 
money  sellin'  the  Gover'ment  the  same  horse  three 
times  over,  an'  just  because  them  New  England  peo- 
ple got  rich  givin'  the  soldiers  shoddy  blankets  or 
paper  shoes,  that  ain't  no  reason  for  believin'  a  man 
can't  get  wealthy  an'  keep  honest.  The  next  fifty 
year  there's  goin'  to  be  the  biggest  chances  to  make 
fortunes  in  this  country  the  world's  ever  seen.  The 
War's  opened  things  up,  an*  our  boy,  when  he  comes, 
has  got  to  remember  there  ain't  nothin'  bigger'n  a 
self-made  man — nor  nothin'  more  American." 

Tom's  eyes  Ranged  about  the  walls  of  the  room. 
The  walls  were  adorned  with  scriptural  texts,  em- 
broidered on  netting  and  framed.  There  was  a 
colored  certificate  of  membership  in  the  Grand  Army 
of  the  Republic,  and  there  were  three  steel-engrav- 
ings: one  an  allegorical  picture  of  Abraham  Lincoln 


6          THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

striking  the  shackles  from  a  chattel-slave,  another 
of  the  infant  Moses  among  the  bulrushes  of  the  Nile, 
and  a  third,  somewhat  yellowed,  representing  the 
members  of  William  Henry  Harrison's  cabinet,  all 
in  constrained  positions  and  all  with  faces  that  de- 
clared their  unanimous  resolve  to  bear  that  constraint 
in  becoming  stoicism.  Perhaps  these  decorations 
influenced  Barnes's  next  words. 
^  "  Patriotic,  that  what  he's  goin'  to  be,"  said  the 
man.  "  He's  got  to  have  respect  for  our  great  peo- 
ple. He's  got  to  remember  this  is  the  splendidest 
country  in  the  world,  that  it's  God's  country;  an'  it's 
better  to  be  a  successful  plain  American  citizen,  who's 
carved  out  his  own' road  an'  made  his  own  money,  than 
to  be  a  duke  or  a  earl.  If  he'll  just  do  that,  an'  if 
he'll  remember  the  commandment  '  Honor  thy  father 
— an'  thy  mother,'  an'  if  he'll  keep  his  eyes  open 
an'll  work  hard  an'  not  grumble  or  shirk,  he  can — 
why,  he  can  be  worth  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dol- 
lars before  he's  forty!  " 

Mrs.  Barnes's  head  was  still  lowered. 

"  An'  be  honest,"  she  submitted,  though  merely 
by  way  of  supplement. 

"Honest?  Yes,  of  course,  be  honest."  Tom 
Barnes  thought  about  this  for  a  moment.  "  Yes," 
he  went  on,  "  be  honest  first,  last,  an'  all  the  time. 
That's  the  biggest  thing  of  all.  You  can't  get  no- 
where if  you  ain't.  Honesty's  the  best  policy.  We 
got  to  teach  him  that." 

'  Teach  him?"  Mrs.  Barnes's  face  expressed  a 
mild  degree  of  surprise.  "  Won't  he  just  know 
that?" 

"  Not  him,"  said  Barnes.     "  All  men  are  born 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE          7 

liars.  '  In  sin  hath  my  mother  begotten  me.'  Good- 
ness is  somethin'  that's  got  to  be  got.  Honest.  Not 
to  lie.  That's  the  thing.  To  never  lie  about  nothin'. 
We  must  teach  him  that,  an'  then  teach  him  to  look 
out  for  opportunities,  an'  to  make  them,  an'  there's 
nowhere  he  can't  get  to." 

"  Nowhere,"  softly  echoed  the  woman  that  was 
soon  to  be  a  mother. 

The  word  was  a  statement;  it  was  made  merelj 
to  cover  that  unspoken  thought  which  had  been  sug- 
gested by  Barnes's  first  mention  of  the  child;  but 
Tom  mistook  it  for  a  question. 

"  O'  course  not,"  he  said.  "  A  self-made,  suc- 
cessful American's  good  as  anybody  in  the  world — 
an'  better." 

He  paused  and  settled  himself  again  in  his  chair. 
His  eye  was  still  upon  the  future. 

"An'  another  thing,"  he  presently  went  on: 
"  we  got  to  remember  the  company  he  keeps.  We 
got  to  know  the  best  people.  I'm  goin'  to  be  the 
richest  man  in  Americus  some  day,  Sallie,  an'  I'd 
rather  be  that  than  a  bank-president  over  there  in 
that  dandy,  low-down  Doncaster.  Meantime,  for 
the  boy's  sake,  it's  just  as  well  for  you  to  keep  in  with 
people  like  the  Kents.  They  give  a  person  standin'. 
Some  day  our  boy  will  be  marryin',  an'  he  must  marry 
a  girl  that's — that's  a  good  girl." 

The  wife  bowed  assent. 

"  An'  me — I  can  help  him  with  his  lessons,  can't 
I?"  she  asked. 

"  O'  course  you  .-can — at  first.  Later  he'll  just 
naturally  be  takin'  studies  you  ain't  never  learned." 

She  looked  away. 


8          [THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  If  we  can  afford  it,"  she  said,  "  you'll  send  him 
to  the  private  school,  won't  you,  Tom  ?  " 

But  Tom  regarded  such  a  suggestion  as  savoring 
of  insubordination. 

"The  private  school?"  he  repeated.  "No,  sir! 
What  do  I  pay  school-tax  for?  Public  school's  the 
place  for  an  American — public  school." 

"  But  aren't  our  public  schools  kind  of  rough?  " 
%  "  What  of  it?  He's  got  to  learn  to  fight  his  own 
battles  an'  take  care  of  himself.  That's  the  thing  in 
this  country:  to  learn  to  look  out  for  yourself.  I 
did." 

"Well," — Mrs.  Barnes's  needle  began  to  flash 
again — "  maybe  he  won't  get  into  any  quarrels.  I 
don't  believe  he  would.  I  never  got  into  quarrels." 

Tom  emitted  a  superior  chuckle. 

"  O'  course  you  didn't:  you  were  a  girl.  Women 
are  different  from  men.  A  few  fights  are  a  good 
thing  for  a  boy." 

Mrs.  Barnes  was  silent,  thinking,  perhaps,  how  soft 
and  how  like  unfolding  rosebuds  are  a  baby's 
hands. 

"An'  college?"  she  at  last  quietly  inquired — 
"  will  you  send  him  to  college,  Tom?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Barnes,  "  I  will.  There  was  Cap'n 
Richardson — Edward  Richardson,  that  Philadelphia 
man.  I  was  near  thirty  an'  'ad  been  in  the  Home 
Guards,  an'  he  was  only  twenty-two  an'  hadn't  had 
no  practical  experience  at  all:  but  just  because  he'd 
been  to  college  an'  knew  influential  people,  he  was  on 
Potter's  staff,  an'  I  was  only  his  orderly.  Yes,  sir, 
our  boy'll  go  to  college;  but  not  to  none  o'  these 
places  in  the  big  towns.  He'll  go  to  Madison-an'- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE          9 

Adams  over  to  Doncaster,  so's  he  can  drive  home 
every  afternoon,  an'  we'll  know  where  he  is 
nights." 

Mrs.  Barnes  glanced  modestly  at  her  husband  and 
modestly  away  again. 

"But  you  do  want  him  to  be  smart,"  she  said; 
"don't  you,  Tom?" 

"  I  want  him  to  be  good." 

"  Like  you,  Tom."  * 

Barnes  turned  his  head.  The  clock  on  the  mantel- 
piece^— it  was  flanked  by  two  large  artificial  sea- 
shells — ticked  noisily. 

"  Better'n  me,"  said  Barnes. 

"Why,  Tom!" 

"  I  mean,"  explained  the  prospective  father,  "  I 
want  to  keep  him  away  from  temptation."  The 
center-table  was  covered  with  a  fringed  and  figured 
cloth.  Tom  toyed  awkwardly  with  the  fringe. 
"  .There's  things  in  this  world  you  don't  know  nothin' 
about,"  he  resumed — "  things  I  wouldn't  never  tell 
you  an'  that  I  wouldn't  say  even  this  much  about  if 
we  wasn't  married,  an'  if  it  wasn't  necessary  on  ac- 
count o'  the  little  one.  O'  course,  it  ainTt  right  a 
good  woman  should  know  about  them — you  oughtn't 
to." 

Mrs.  Barnes's  face  was  scarlet. 

"  Of  course  not!  "  she  whispered. 

"  You   can't  understand,"   pursued  her  husband, 
"  what  a  young  fellow  has  got  to  go  through  with, 
with  all  the  bad  women  there  is.     Not  knowin',  an' 
it  not  bein'  right  ^ou  should  know,  vatio/i.  '  An  m- 
understand.  '  amething  else,  of  the 

"  Oh !  "  said  Sarah  Banker  at  the  beginning  of  this 


12        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

talk.  But  again  she  repressed  the  idea,  and  it  re- 
mained unspoken.  Her  glance  was  once  more  beyond 
her  husband,  once  more  soft  and  tender. 

"  An*  him,"  she  inquired—"  what  will  he  be?  " 

Tom  smiled. 

"  Well,"  said  he,  "  I  don't  count  on  makin'  him  a 
President." 

But  his  wife  could  see  no  limitations  for  the  child 
yet  unborn. 

"  Why  not?  "  she  asked,  and  her  tone  was  as  near 
to  resentment  as  ever  Tom  had  heard  it. 

Instantly  the  smile  passed  from  the  husband's  lips. 
The  face  retook  its  habitual  expression  of  determina- 
tion, but  retook  it  with  a  difference.  The  old  pride 
was  there,  but  it  was  somehow,  for  the  moment,  a 
different  sort  of  pride.  There,  was  love — a  new  and 
strange  kind  of  love — softening  the  usually  keen  eyes. 
Tom  spoke  with  the  utmost  seriousness. 

"  I'm  goin'  to  make  him  somethin'  better'n  a 
President,"  said  Barnes:  "  I'm  goin'  to  make  our  son 
able  to  make  himself.  I'm  goin'  to  put  him  in  my 
store — it'll  be  a  big  store  by  then,  Sallie — an'  I'm 
goin'  to  learn  him  the  business;  an'  then,  knowin' 
how  to  make  money  honestly,  he's  goin'  to  make 
it." 

"Just  that,  Tom?" 

"  No,  not  just  that.  I  don't  want  him  to  be  just 
rich.  I  want  him  to  be  good  an1  useful.  But  it 
stands  to  reason  the  man  with  means  can  be  more 
useful'n  the  man  without.  The  time's  comin'  when 
Presidents  an'  Senators  ain't  goin'  to  be  the  big 
figures  in  this  country.  The  time's  comin'  when  the 
big  business  men'll  make  Presidents  an'  Senators — - 


[THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        13 

an'  unmake  'em — an'  I  want  our  son  to  be  one  o' 
them  big  business  men ;  an'  I  want  him  to  be  good  so's 
he  can  use  his  power  an'  his  influence  to  serve  his  na- 
tion, to  keep  the  United  States  the  richest  an'  best 
country  in  the  world,  to  keep  America  for  the  Ameri- 
cans, an'  to  leave  it  better'n  he  found  it  because  of  his 
money  an'  his  work." 

Tom  paused.    His  eyes  were  moist. 

"  That's  what  I  want,"  he  said  in  a  lowered  voice; 
"  that's  what  I  want  him  to  be,  an' — an'  you've  got 

to  help  me "  He  hesitated,  and  then  for  the 

first  time  addressed  her  by  the  title  that  he  thereafter 
used  until  the  day  of  their  parting:  "  You've  got  to 
help  me — mother." 

She  looked  at  him  with  her  face  full  of  an  awed 
joy. 

"  I  will  help  you,"  she  said. 

A  critical  outsider,  had  it  been  possible  for  any 
outsider  to  overhear  their  conversation,  might  have 
remembered  that,  in  all  their  detailed  plans,  the 
Barneses  had  made  small  provision  for  the  coming 
youngster's  amusements;  but  to  this  pair  approach- 
ing the  dark  tower  of  parenthood  the  question  of 
amusement  did  not  present  itself.  All  that  now  did 
present  itself  was  the  tenderness  before  which  they 
found  themselves  awkward  and  almost  ashamed. 

Tom  came  around  the  table  and,  bending  above 
his  wife,  timidly  touched,  with  his  great  thumb  and 
forefinger,  the  dress  that  she  was  preparing  against 
their  expected  child. 

"  You  sew  nicer  Sallie,"  he  said.  "  I  knowed  you 
sewed  well,  but  I  never  thought  before  you  could 
sew  so — so  nice" 


14        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Their  eyes  met,  and  suddenly  her  mouth  twitched. 

"  Oh,  Tom,"  she  said,  "  I'm— I'm  a  little  afraid!  " 

He  raised  his  hand  to  her  shoulder  and  patted  it, 
heavily. 

"  Afraid  ?  "  he  asked.     "  What  of  ?  " 

"  I — suppose  he'd — "  she  could  scarcely  frame 
the  word—  "  suppose  he'd  die,  Tom!  " 

But  Tom,  being  a  man,  only  laughed. 

"  Not  your  boy  an'  mine,  Sallie !  No  danger  o' 
that.  Thank  God,  we  come  from  hardy  stock." 

"  I    know,    but    even    then—  She    waj    not 

yet     to     be     comforted.      "  Even     then     I'm — I'm 
afraid." 

'*  Tut,  tut,"  said  her  husband.  "  You  ain't  afraid. 
You're  just  tired." 

"  No.  I'm  afraid.  There's  so  many  things,  so 
very  many  things,  to  be  afraid  of,  Tom.  What 
if  we  brought  him  up  wrong?" 

"Bring  him  up?  Why,  we'll  bring  him  up  like 
other  people  bring  up  their  sons — nice  people;  then 
we  can't  bring  him  up  wrong.  You're  not  afraid  of 
that,  Sallie.  What  are  you  afraid  of?  " 

"  I  don't  know.    Everything.    I'm  just  afraid." 

He  tried,  clumsily,  to  divert  her  mind.  He  picked 
up  the  work-basket  at  her  elbow  and  drew  forth  a 
pair  of  tiny  knitted  socks.  He  laid  them  in  the  hol- 
low of  his  big  hand. 

"  Ain't  they  little !  "  he  said  in  a  kind  of  reverence. 
"My,  ain't  they  little!" 

Obvious  as  his  ruse  was,  it  succeeded.  Mrs. 
Barnes  smiled. 

*  You  men!  "  she  said.  "  You're  just  as  ignorant 
as  can  be  about  such  things." 


LTHE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE         15 

"  Well,"  replied  Tom,  "  I  guess  you  know  best, 
mother.  Let  him  wear  'em  for  a  while  if  he  can 
ever  get  into  them;  but  no  short  stockin's  an'  half 
bare  legs  when  he  gets  older."  His  tone  was  serious 
again.  "  None  o'  that  sort  o'  softness  for  my  boy." 

Mrs.  Barnes  was  hurt.  She  accepted  the  possessive 
pronoun  as  tradition  bade  her  accept  it,  but  the  socks 
— surely  they  were  within  her  own  province. 

"  Think  of  his  pretty  little  legs,"  she  ventured. 

Tom's  brow  clouded. 

"  It  ain't  decent,"  he  declared. 

"  Why  not?    He's  sure  to  go  barefoot,  Tom." 

"That's  different,"  said  Tom.  And  then,  at  a 
single  cast,  he  unconsciously  plumbed  the  very  depths 
of  ethics.  "  It  ain't  what  you  cover  that  counts," 
he  said;  "  an'  it  ain't  what  you  uncover:  it's  what  you 
half-an'-half."^ 

Mrs.  Barnes  sighed  softly;  but  Tom  heard  her 
and  feared  a  return  of  her  recent  agitation.  He 
picked  up  the  lamp  from  the  table. 

"  Come  on,"  he  said  kindly.  "  It's  time  to  go  to 
bed.  I'll  shut  up  the  house." 


§4.  Yet  late  that  night,  in  the  darkness  of  their 
bed,  the  thought  that  had  come  to  her  earlier  in  the 
evening,  with  Tom's  first  mention  of  their  child,  re- 
turned and  would  not  again  depart.  It  thrived  in 
the  shadow,  and  it  held  her  eyelids  wide. 

The  husband  felt  his  wife  stirring  beside  him.  He 
was  instantly  broad  awake. 

"What's  the  matter,  mother?"  he  asked. 

She  made  a  little  sound  in  her  throat;  but  whether 
it  was  tears  or  laughter  he  could  not  determine. 


14        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Their  eyes  met,  and  suddenly  her  mouth  twitched. 

"  Oh,  Tom,"  she  said,  "  I'm— I'm  a  little  afraid !  " 

He  raised  his  hand  to  her  shoulder  and  patted  it, 
heavily. 

"  Afraid  ?  "  he  asked.     "  What  of  ?  " 

"  I — suppose  he'd—  '  she  could  scarcely  frame 
the  word — "  suppose  he'd  die,  Tom !  " 

But  Tom,  being  a  man,  only  laughed. 

"  Not  your  boy  an'  mine,  Sallie !  No  danger  o' 
that.  Thank  God,  we  come  from  hardy  stock." 

"  I    know,    but    even    then—  She    waj    not 

yet     to    be     comforted.      "  Even     then     I'm — I'm 
afraid." 

'  Tut,  tut,"  said  her  husband.  "  You  ain't  afraid. 
You're  just  tired." 

"  No.  I'm  afraid.  There's  so  many  things,  so 
very  many  things,  to  be  afraid  of,  Tom.  What 
if  we  brought  him  up  wrong?  " 

"  Bring  him  up?  Why,  we'll  bring  him  up  like 
other  people  bring  up  their  sons — nice  people;  then 
we  can't  bring  him  up  wrong.  You're  not  afraid  of 
that,  Sallie.  What  are  you  afraid  of?  " 

u  I  don't  know.    Everything.    I'm  just  afraid." 

He  tried,  clumsily,  to  divert  her  mind.  He  picked 
up  the  work-basket  at  her  elbow  and  drew  forth  a 
pair  of  tiny  knitted  socks.  He  laid  them  in  the  hol- 
low of  his  big  hand. 

"  Ain't  they  little !  "  he  said  in  a  kind  of  reverence. 
"My,  ain't  they  little!" 

Obvious  as  his  ruse  was,  it  succeeded.  Mrs. 
Barnes  smiled. 

*  You  men !  "  she  said.  "  You're  just  as  ignorant 
as  can  be  about  such  things." 


LTHE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE         15 

"  Well,"  replied  Tom,  "  I  guess  you  know  best, 
mother.  Let  him  wear  'em  for  a  while  if  he  can 
ever  get  into  them;  but  no  short  stockin's  an'  half 
bare  legs  when  he  gets  older."  His  tone  was  serious 
again.  "  None  o'  that  sort  o'  softness  for  my  boy." 

Mrs.  Barnes  was  hurt.  She  accepted  the  possessive 
pronoun  as  tradition  bade  her  accept  it,  but  the  socks 
— surely  they  were  within  her  own  province. 

"  Think  of  his  pretty  little  legs,"  she  ventured. 

Tom's  brow  clouded. 

"  It  ain't  decent,"  he  declared. 

"  Why  not?    He's  sure  to  go  barefoot,  Tom." 

"That's  different,"  said  Tom.  And  then,  at  a 
single  cast,  he  unconsciously  plumbed  the  very  depths 
of  ethics.  "  It  ain't  what  you  cover  that  counts," 
he  said;  "  an'  it  ain't  what  you  uncover:  it's  what  you 
half-an'-half."^ 

Mrs.  Barnes  sighed  softly;  but  Tom  heard  her 
and  feared  a  return  of  her  recent  agitation.  He 
picked  up  the  lamp  from  the  table. 

"  Come  on,"  he  said  kindly.  "  It's  time  to  go  to 
bed.  I'll  shut  up  the  house." 

§4.  Yet  late  that  night,  in  the  darkness  of  their 
bed,  the  thought  that  had  come  to  her  earlier  in  the 
evening,  with  Tom's  first  mention  of  their  child,  re- 
turned and  would  not  again  depart.  It  thrived  in 
the  shadow,  and  it  held  her  eyelids  wide. 

The  husband  felt  his  wife  stirring  beside  him.  He 
was  instantly  broad  awake. 

"What's  the  matter,  mother?"  he  asked. 

She  made  a  little  sound  in  her  throat;  but  whether 
it  was  tears  or  laughter  he  could  not  determine. 


1 6        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

:<  Tom,"  she  whispered,  her  arm  stealing  about 
his  neck,  "  Oh,  Tom, — suppose — suppose  it's — a 
girl!" 

At  such  an  awful  suggestion  Tom  Barnes  nearly 
leaped  from  bed. 

"  Nonsense !  "  he  replied.  "  Go  to  sleep.  Non- 
sense. It  can't  be  a  girl." 


II 


AJD  a  boy  it  was. 
There  was  a  tremendous  howdydo  about  It, 
even  more  of  a  howdydo  than  the  baby  him- 
self— though  no  baby  ever  born  underestimates  his 
own  importance — seemed  to  think  either  wise  or  fit- 
ting. On  the  eve  of  his  arrival,  which  was  some 
months  after  the  night  when  Mrs.  Barnes  evinced  her 
terrifying  and  wholly  unwarranted  misgiving,  Dr. 
Ireland  was  sent  for,  by  a  breathless  messenger,  on 
three  futile  occasions,  until  even  the  doctor's  good 
nature — he  was  one  of  the  old  sort  of  physicians,  who 
died  with  one-third  of  their  bills  outlawed  and  an- 
other third  uncollected  and  uncollectable — until  even 
Dr.  Ireland's  temper  was  severely  strained.  So  it 
happened  that  when,  at  dawn,  the  fourth  messenger 
panted  the  summons,  the  physician  rose  leisurely  and 
took  time  to  remember  his  rheumatism  before  he 
drew  on  the  high  boots  that  he  always  wore  under 
his  trousers,  and  came  upon  the  tumultuous  household 
in  Front  Street  not  a  moment  before  he  was  really 
needed.  And  then  he  joked  with  Tom  Barnes  and 
creaked  up  the  stairs  and  calmed  Mrs.  Barnes  with 
a  word  or  two  of  quiet  assurance  and  scolded  Mrs. 
Fanny  Fanistock,  who  was  always  "  called  in  to  help  " 
on  birthdays  in  Americus,  and,  after  what  seemed 
to  be  time  without  end,  creaked  down  the  stairs  to 
Barnes — who  had  been  tramping  the  parlor  and  hold- 

17 


1 8        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

ing  his  long  breaths  at  the  sound  of  the  footsteps 
overhead — and  commanded : 

"  Tom,  you  rascal,  get  up  there  and  see  how  much 
better  a  son  God's  given  you  than  you  deserve." 

It  was  then  that  there  began  the  howdydo  to 
which  this  son  objected.  Mrs.  Fanny  bathed  him, 
which  process  he  hated  immediately.  His  pale-faced 
mother,  weakly  smiling,  held  out  hef  arms  and  raised 
her  tired  head  just  an  inch  from  the  pillow  to  kiss 
him — which  he  resented  as  a  too  sudden  familiarity. 
Mrs.  Kent  and  Mrs.  Fry,  because  they  were  friends 
and  neighbors,  came  in  to  scrutinize  and  praise  him, 
to  declare  that  his  eyes,  which  were  opaque,  exactly 
matched  his  mother's,  and  that,  though  he  had  no 
nose  worthy  of  notice,  it  was  the  image  of  his  fa- 
ther's; to  say  what  ought  to  be  done  that  had  not 
been  done,  and  to  point  out  how  wrong  was  every- 
thing that  had  been  essayed.  Mrs.  Fry,  who  was  al- 
ready the  mother  of  a  boy  several  months  old,  com- 
pared her  sturdy  Lysander  with  this  small  "  new- 
born," and,  from  her  long  experience,  advised  Mrs. 
Barnes  to  wean  her  child  "  before  seven  months." 
Against  all  these  remarks  as  to  his  appearance  and 
counsels  as  to  his  bathing  and  nourishment,  the  baby 
lustily  protested;  and  when,  finally,  his  big  father, 
after  much  hovering  in  the  background,  where  the 
women  had  left  him  to  a  fine  sense  of  his  masculine 
inutility,  and  after  many  awkward  approaches  and 
considerable  sheepish  grinning — when,  finally,  his  big 
father  drew  near  and  tried  not  really  to  fondle  him, 
you  know,  but  just  to  heft  him — then,  with  the  four 
women  for  chorus,  the  baby  screamed  and  kicked  and 
denounced  the  universe  louder  than  ever. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        19 

§  2.  Thus  it  was  that,  on  a  certain  raw  Novem- 
ber morning  in  the  year  of  grace  1871,  after  many 
more  difficulties  and  dangers  than  Tom  had  antici- 
pated, and  before  what  the  dramatic  critics  damn  as 
"  a  small  but  appreciative  audience,"  Daniel  Webster 
Barnes  made  his  entrance  upon  the  stage  of  a  busy 
and  only  limitedly  commending  world.  That  century 
of  darkness  which  we  call  the  nineteenth  had,  you 
observe,  spent  scarcely  two-thirds  of  its  strength. 
The  baby's  immature  country  still  bled  from  the 
wounds  of  the  war  that  freed,  for  a  time,  the  negro 
slaves,  and  still  groaned  in  the  agonies  of  that  period 
of  reconstruction  which  freed  a  goodly  number  of 
other  things.  The  first  air  that  the  little  lungs 
breathed  was  an  air  of  uncertainty  and  muddle  and 
transition.  When  the  land  was  but  awakening  to  a 
new  existence ;  when  the  eyes  of  the  cunning  were  be- 
ginning to  see;  when  competition  still  stood  upright 
in  the  prize-ring  of  commerce;  when  the  town  of 
Americus  still  believed  in  the  future — entered  Daniel 
Webster  Barnes. 

For  Daniel  Webster  was  the  name  that  Tom 
Barnes  had  chosen. 

"  I  believe  in  the  good  influence  o'  good  names," 
said  Tom.  "  Yes,  sir.  It  teaches  respect  an'  imita- 
tion, an'  it  keeps  the  lesson  always  right  there  before 


'em." 


Mrs.  Barnes,  who  had  not  read  "  Ichabod,"  had 
nevertheless  harbored  a  fearful  fondness  for  Cyril 
or  Percival ;  but  she  said  nothing. 

"  Dani-el  Webster  Barnes,"  repeated  Tom. 
"  Sounds  good,  don't  it?  Well,  Dan'l,  you've  got 
to  make  Americus  sit  up  an'  take  notice." 


20        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

§  3.  Americus  was  neither  then  nor  later  a  town 
to  notice  anything,  save  with  a  jeer,  that  was  in  any 
wise  different  from  the  few  things  to  which  Americus 
was  used.  Babies,  however,  were  well  enough  within 
the  boundaries  of  its  experience,  if  not  its  understand- 
ing, to  be  received  as  a  matter  for  questionable  jokes 
among  the  men  and  for  indiscriminate  kissing  by  the 
women;  and  so  the  town  expected  to  receive  Master 
Barnes. 

The  forty-odd  years  that  have  passed  since  then 
have  changed  Americus  in  every  respect  except  in  its 
customs  and  its  intelligence.  The  place  has  grown 
old  and  has  retained  intact  the  liberalism  of  yesterday 
that  is  the  conservatism  of  to-day.  The  lumber- 
looters  have  cut  away  the  timber  of  the  Alleghanies 
until  the  rafts  that  once  blackened  the  river-front  and 
crowded  the  shops  of  the  town  with  spike-shod, 
money-spending  men  are  remembered  only  by  the  mid- 
dle-aged. The  canal,  fallen  in,  has  dried  up.  The 
railroad,  accustomed  to  getting  all  that  it  asked  for, 
has  been  offended  at  an  amazing  refusal  by  the  voters 
to  give  it  yet  another  "  right  "  that  it  had  no  right  to, 
and  has  removed  its  roundhouse  and  five  hundred 
citizens.  The  main  line  h^s  been  laid  four  miles  be- 
yond the  hills  "  back  in  the  country,"  and,  with  the 
coming  of  the  Steel  Trust,  the  furnaces  have  been 
deserted,  and  the  rolling-mills,  after  crawling  along 
on  half-time  for  a  dozen  years,  have  shut  down  for- 
ever. The  only  forces  that  keep  Americus  from  death 
are  a  few  brave  little  independent  industries,  and  the 
only  forces  that  keep  the  people  from  admitting  this 
dissolution  are  the  twin  local  superstitions  that  to 
speak  the  truth  would  be  to  display  disloyalty  to  the 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE         21 

town  and  that  to  talk  about  the  certainty  of  better 
times  will  bring  them. 

In  the  early  seventies,  however,  when  the  land  be- 
gan to  react  from  the  stagnation  of  the  previous  de- 
cade, those  appearances  which  we  call  realities  vastly 
differed  in  Americus.  All  spring  long  the  town  was 
full  of  logmen ;  all  summer  a  slow  procession  of  canal- 
boats  drew  up  at  the  chutes,  received  their  cargoes 
of  coal,  and  were  towed  across  the  broad  Susque- 
hanna  to  the  other  arm  of  the  canal  on  the  York 
County  side.  The  Three  Mounts  House  and  the 
Adams  Hotel  had  almost  as  many  persons  in  their 
bedrooms  as  they  had  at  their  bars;  the  banks 
thrived;  the  shops  flourished;  the  insurance  agents 
laid  aside  cozy  "  futures  ";  and  from  January  to  De- 
cember the  flour-mills  ground  the  wheat  that  the 
shovel-hatted  Mennonite  farmers  had  driven  into 
town ;  the  furnaces  and  the  rolling-mills  were  a  cloud 
of  smoke  by  day  and  a  pillar  of  fire  by  night,  and 
the  railway  trains  were  stopped  and  broken  and  made 
and  remade  and  dispatched;  and  they  hauled  away 
what  Americus  produced,  and  brought  back  gold  in 
return. 

But  at  heart,  Americus  A^as  then  just  what  it  is 
in  1912.  Every  citizen  was  sure  that  this  was  the 
best  possible  world,  that  the  United  States  composed 
the  best  nation  in  the  world,  that  Pennsylvania  was 
the  best  state  in  the  nation,  that  Doncaster  County 
was  the  best  county  in  Pennsylvania,  and  that  Amer- 
icus was  the  best  town  in  Doncaster  County.  Yet 
mark  the  paradox  ^Americus  hated  Doncaster,  which 
was  the  county-seat;  Doncaster  County  as  a  whole 
ridiculed  all  the  other  counties  of  the  state;  the  state 


22        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

as  a  whole  scoffed  at  all  the  other  states  of  the  Union, 
and  the  Union — as  we  all  know — looks  upon  any 
foreigners-born  with  a  blending  of  amusement  and 
apprehension.  The  result  was  those  sister  virtues 
which  we  call  Patriotism,  State-Loyalty,  and  Local- 
Pride — not  Progress. 

The  town  was  so  used  to  itself  that  it  could  never 
tolerate  anything  different.  Let  an  Englishman  at- 
tempt its  streets  in  walking-costume,  and  he  might 
be  permited  to  escape  with  a  few  verbal  insults  as  an 
obvious  alien  and  therefore  inevitably  insane.  But 
let  a  citizen  try  the  same  feat,  and  he  would  simply 
have  to  leave  the  town.  How  bicycles  ever  became 
possible  in  Americus  is  still  a  mystery ;  how  they  have 
again  become  impossible  is  inexplicable. 

Not  that  the  citizens  ever  were  consciously,  as  a 
class,  either  evil  or  malicious.  Not  that  they  are  at 
present  any  more  to  blame  for  remaining  contented 
with  what  they  are:  Americus  was  what  hundreds 
of  other  American  towns  were :  it  is  what  they 
are  now.  But  all  that  is  economics  and  not  narra- 
tive. .  .  .  , 

Every  person  in  Americus  knew  every  other  per- 
son. Every  person  in  Americus  went  to  day-school 
and  Sunday  school,  or  to  work  and  to  church,  with 
meritorious  regularity.  It  was  then,  and  is  to-day, 
quite  too  terrible  for  any  of  the  "  old  families  "  (ear- 
liest date,  A.D.  1700)  to  do  anything  or  be  anything 
characteristic  of  the  "  newer  crowd  ";  and  the  newer 
crowd  were  just  as  careful  not  to  do  anything  or  be 
anything  that  was  characteristic  of  the  newest;  and 
as  for  the  newest,  there  being  nothing  lower,  they 
were  free  to  do  and  be  what  they  pleased — and  for 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        23 

the  most  part  they  pleased  to  imitate  the  old  fam- 
ilies and  climb  back  toward  them.  With  a  few  shin- 
ing exceptions,  such  people  as  read  books  at  all  read 

the  novels  of Well,  you  probably  would  not  so 

much  as  know  the  authors'  names,  but  the  legitimate 
descendants  of  those  authors  are  Miss  Marie  Corelli 
and  Mr.  Hall  Caine.  And  so,  finally,  everyone  was 
solemnly  satisfied  with  his  ready-made  opinions,  po- 
litical, economic,  and  religious. 

There  is  no  mistake  impossible  to  any  of  us  and 
no  mistake  not  worth  the  pains  of  correcting.  The 
great  mass  of  mankind  can  give  no  reasons  for  their 
moral  standards;  right  is  right  because  it  is  right; 
they  let  it  go  at  that :  consequently,  the  great  mass  of 
mankind  are  bitterly  faithful  to  an  inherited  moral 
code  and  possess  absolutely  no  apprehension  of  moral 
values — the  people  of  Americus  were  but  a  part  of 
the  mass.  Parenthood  in  particular,  moved  there,  as 
elsewhere,  with  its  finger  perpetually  on  its  lips,  its 
eyes  perpetually  commanding  silence.  The  average 
citizen  there  was  the  average  citizen  of  that  period 
everywhere :  a  mental  coward  whose  intellectual  land- 
scape was  plentifully  dotted  with  those  Cities  of 
Refuge,  the  platitudinous  generalities  of  past  genera- 
tions; a  contemporary  of  Gladstone,  but  an  anachron- 
ism in  that  time  when  man  will  be  sufficiently  edu- 
cated to  think  less  of  the  past  and  more  of  the  future. 

§  4.  So  Danny  Barnes  came  to  Americus  and  in 
Americus  passed  through  the  croup  and  the  perambu- 
lator, the  measles  and  the  mothering,  the  scarlet  fever 
and  the  first  spanning;  ran  all  that  gauntlet  of  dis- 
eases and  dispensations  then  considered  requisite  and 


24        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENC  i 

necessary  as  well  for  the  childish  body  as  for  the 
childish  soul — and  came  at  last  to  the  age  when 
memory  gains  tenacity. 

He  has  always,  of  course,  been  rather  uncertain 
about  the  start  of  this.  What  he  recalls  as  experi- 
encing-mingles  imperceptibly,  at  the  farther  end,  with 
what  he  recalls  merely  as  having  been  told  that  he 
experienced.  But  he  is  almost  sure  that  he  remem- 
bers gripping  his  father's  big  index  finger  and  being 
led  to  his  first  circus,  where  he  was  frightened  by 
a  caged  lion  and  enchanted  by  a  spangled  lady  on 
the  horizontal-bar:  and  he  is  quite  certain  that  he 
recollects  his  mother's  ill-concealed  grief  on  the  joy- 
ous occasion  when  he  took  his  blond  curls  to  the  bar- 
ber's and  returned  without  them. 

For  Danny's  hair,  though  it  grew  brown  enough  as 
Danny  grew  older,  was  tow-colored  at  first,  and 
Danny,  according  to  the  enduring  maternal  creed,  was 
a  child  good  to  look  upon.  His  mother  has  told 
him  that  he  was  beautiful,  but  of  that  he  has  his  mis- 
givings. Indeed,  there  is  a  much-rubbed  cabinet- 
photograph  of  Daniel,  made  at  this  time,  which  shows 
a  pug-nosed  little  fellow  in  kilts,  large-footed,  broad- 
faced,  with  eyes  abashed  by  the  pointing  camera  and 
head  held  stiff  by  the  photographer's  frame  behind. 
But  this  picture  is  not  a  fair  criterion.  In  it  the  sub- 
ject's unruly  hair  is  "  slicked,"  his  cheeks  shine  from 
a  rigorous  application  of  home-boiled  soap,  and  his 
whole  natural  being  has  plainly  been  washed  away 
by  a  preparatory  bath.  The  fact  is  that  Danny, 
though  in  no  sense  extraordinary,  was  a  bright-eyed 
child  that,  if  not  beautiful,  was  pretty,  and  that  re- 
tained, so  long  as  his  conditions—the  average  condi- 


THE  SENTENCE  OI   SILENCE        25 

tions — made  it  possible,  the  charm  and  wonder  of  a 
pure  heart. 

Dan  does  not  remember  going  to  the  photog- 
rapher's, unpleasant  as  that  ordeal  must  have  been, 
but  he  does  remember,  though  probably  only  because 
it  was  repeated  throughout  his  childhood  and  became 
the  foundation  of  his  whole  education,  the  sort  of 
teaching  that  he  at  this  time  received.  He  would 
hear  from  Thomas  Barnes  of  Thomas'  youth — of 
that  Golden  Age  when  father  was  a  boy — of  his  par- 
ent's own  happinesses  and  struggles,  and  of  the  War 
and  how  splendid  it  was  to  be  a  soldier  and  to  be 
brave  and  fight.  Tom  would  tell  the  child  of  the 
great  men  that  he  had  read  of,  or  seen,  or  even,  some- 
times, spoken  to.  And  when  the  little  fellow's  eyes 
glowed  with  envy  and  the  passion  for  emulation, 
Tom  would  point  out  how  the  chief  virtue  of  the 
soldier  was  the  chief  virtue  of  the  child — obedience — 
and  how  it  is  the  duty  of  us  all  to  respect  unques- 
tioningly  those  whom  it  is  a  virtue  to  obey. 

Respect — that  was  cardinal:  respect  for  the  ac- 
cepted, for  success  as  Americus  counted  success,  for 
greatness  as  Americus  esteemed  greatness,  for  the 
glorious  company  of  the  things  that  are.  The  self- 
made  man  was  the  national  hero ;  political  power  was 
the  token  of  personal  ability  (that  is,  if  it  was  power 
in  Tom's  party;  in  a  member  of  the  other  party  it 
was  a  sign  of  sin)  ;  wealth  (Tom  called  it  "  means  ") 
possessed  an  inherent  rectitude,  and  all  these  things 
commanded  deference.  Therefrom,  indeed,  Tom  re- 
ceived a  reflected  .glory,  for  did  he  not  know  Mr. 
Richardson,  the  rich  merchant  in  Philadelphia,  and 
had  he  not,  but  recently,  eaten  a  meal  with  Simon 


26        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Cameron?  Not  that  this  second-hand  greatness  was 
needed :  the  parents  soon  assumed,  in  the  child's  eyes, 
Olympian  proportions.  The  father  was  a  Jove,  the 
mother  a  Minerva.  It  went  without  saying,  but  with 
much  more  force  than  specific  mention,  that  age  knew 
all  and  youth  nothing,  and  that  therefore  fresh  ideas 
are  bound  to  be  wrong  ideas,  except  as  they  were 
not  really  fresh  at  all,  but  only  the  old  ideas  adapted 
to  new  opportunities. 

"  So  you  see,"  said  Tom,  "  when  you're  a  man, 
Danny,  you  must  make  your  own  way,  an'  then  folks'll 
respect  you." 

Danny  was  playing  with  his  tin  soldiers  on  the 
floor.  The  handful  of  blue-coats  had  just  conquered 
five  times  their  number  in  red — with  tremendous 
slaughter. 

'You're  a  self-made  man,  ain't  you,  pop?"  he 
proudly  inquired. 

Thomas  caught  a  blush  in  time  to  stop  it. 

"  So  far  as  I've  gone,"  he  admitted. 

"  An'  you're  rich,  ain't  you?  "  persisted  Danny. 

"Not  yet,"  said  Tom;  "  but  if  honesty  an'  hard 
work  an'  no  grumblin'  bring  what  they  had  ought  to 
bring,  I  guess  I'll  be  fairly  well-to-do  one  o'  these 
days." 

For  honesty  also  these  parents  insisted  upon. 
Danny  remembers  his  stern-lipped  father's  long  and 
rather  dry  talks  to  him  on  honesty;  and  he  remem- 
bers his  mother's  briefer,  but  more  impressive,  cau- 
tions to  the  same  end,  these  latter  made  embarrass- 
edly  and  only  when  mother  and  son  were  alone 
together;  when  he  had  just  said  "  Now  I  lay  me  "  at 
her  knee  or  prevailed  upon  her  to  lie  down  on  the 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        27 

bed  for  a  while  and  keep  the  bears  away:  cautions 
that,  though  they  were  based  on  the  assumption  that 
no  offense  had  been  committed,  always  somehow  made 
him  want  to  weep.  Danny  would  as  soon  have 
thought  of  the  sun  dropping  from  the  heavens  or  the 
apple  falling  skyward  as  of  either  of  his  parents  tell- 
ing a  lie. 

§  5.  One  of  his  earliest  recollections  is  connected 
with  an  anecdote  of  his  father's  bravery,  but  it  was 
not  until  long  afterward  that  Danny  appreciated  the 
full  meaning  of  the  comment  that  ended  the  narra- 
tive so  abruptly. 

The  family  sat  at  its  six  o'clock  supper,  and  Danny 
was  so  busy  trying  to  secure  more  molasses  than  his 
slice  of  bread  would  hold  that  he  did  not  note  the 
beginning  of  the  conversation.  The  first  thing  that 
he  realized  was  that  his  father  was  in  the  midst  of  a 
story  of  some  adventure  of  the  day. 

'  Yes,  sir,"  Tom  was  saying,  u  that  Freddie  Fry 
come  right  in  the  store,  an'  he  was  fightin'  drunk— 
fightin'  drunk.  I  told  him  to  get  out,  an'  he  wouldn't 
go.  Then  I  went  to  the  door  an'  seen  Constable 
Kautz  over  by  the  Adams  Hotel,  an'  I  called  him  in. 

"  *  Come  on,  Fred,'  says  he;  *  you  git  out  o'  here 
an*  go  home  peaceable.' 

"  An'  what  do  ypu  think,  mother?  "  Tom's  voice 
lowered  as  he  approached  his  first  climax.  *  That 
fellow  Fry  picked  up  one  o'  them  stools  alongside 
o'  the  counters  an'  waved  it  over  his  head  an'  hit 
Kautz  an'  knocked  him  flat  down  so's  I  thought  he'd 
knocked  his  brains  out." 

He  paused.    Mrs.  Barnes  was  pale  with  the  sense 


28         THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

of  her  husband's  escaped  danger;  Danny,  arrested 
by  the  story,  sat  with  the  piece  of  bread,  the  mo- 
lasses from  which  trickled  disregarded  over  his  fingers 
and  down  to  his  tucked-in  napkin,  suspended  halfway 
to  his  open  mouth. 

"  What  on  earth  did  you  do,  Tom?  "  asked  Mrs. 
Barnes. 

"  Do?  I  just  walked  up  to  him,"  said  Barnes, 
"  an'  took  him  by  the  collar.  'Git  out!'  I  says. 
An'  just  as  I  come  at  him,  he  ups  with  that  stool 
ag'in  an'  waves  it  over  his  head,  an'  I  thought  he 
was  goin'  to  knock  my  brains  out,  too." 

Once  more  he  paused  for  a  climax. 

But  Danny,  his  eyes  big  with  admiration  for  his 
father,  could  endure  no  longer  the  suspense. 

"  He — he  couldn't  knock  any  brains  out'n  you,  pop, 
could  he?  "  asked  the  child. 

§  6.  And  Danny  remembers  one  or  two  glimpses 
of  a  tea-party  that  his  mother  gave  to  the  members  of 
the  Dorcas  Society.  It  is  among  his  first  memories, 
so  that  the  party  must  have  occurred  at  about  the 
time  of  his  father's  heroic  casting-out  of  Lysander 
Fry's  parent;  but  whether  it  occurred  before  or  after 
that  battle,  he  has  never  been  able  precisely  to  deter- 
mine. Also,  the  child  must  have  been  permitted  to 
be  present  during  the  whole  of  the  decorous  festivi- 
ties, yet  he  can  recall  only  that  pair  of  pictures. 

Of  these  the  former  is  merely  the  entrance  of  Mrs. 
Kent,  whom  Danny  immediately  considered  as,  next 
of  course  to  his  mother,  the  most  beautiful  woman 
that  he  had  ever  seen.  He  recalls  ihe  sense  of  dis- 
loyalty with  which  her  appearance  forced  him  to 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        29 

admit  her  as,  if  not  quite  so  beautiful  as  Mrs.  Barnes, 
at  any  rate  more  radiant.  She  had  splendid  black 
hair  and  great  brown  eyes,  and  the  carriage  of  a 
person  accustomed  to  deference,  so  that  the  child 
knew  instantly  that  she  must  have  "  means."  He 
had  heard,  too,  his  father  insist  that  she  be  invited 
because  of  something  that  the  elder  Barnes  called 
her  "  position,"  and  the  child  learned  that  she  was 
not  a  member  of  the  Dorcas  Society,  but  an  Epis- 
copalian; and  he  wondered  what  an  Episcopalian 
might  be  and  whether  all  Episcopalians  were  radiant. 
For  a  long  time  thereafter  that  word  Episcopalian 
suggested  to  him  a  superior  order  of  being. 

Then — it  must  have  been  half  an  hour  afterwards 
— while  Danny  was  sitting  on  the  floor  in  a  corner, 
his  young  nostrils  first  inhaled  the  smoke  of  gossip, 
which  is  the  incense  that  the  respectable  burn  to 
vice.  Two  of  the  guests  were  discussing  some  mem- 
ber of  the  Society  that  was  not  present,  and  Danny 
listened. 

u  Of  course  Martha's  not  here,"  said  one  of  the 
gossips — Dan  remembers  the  speaker  as  a  hatchet- 
faced  woman  of  enormous  age,  perhaps  quite  forty 
years — "  of  course  she's  not  here.  Sallie  Barnes  is 
the  kind  that's  always  on  the  safe  side,  and  she  knows 
there's  bound  to  be  trouble  about  Martha  some  day 


soon." 


The  other  woman,  whom  Dan's  recollection,  here 
confused,  pictures  as  the  twin  sister  of  the  first 
speaker  and  whose  rapid  sibilant  voice  he  associates 
still  with  the  voice  of  the  Gossipmonger  as  a  class, 
nodded. 

"  The  way  Martha  throws  herself  at  the  pastor's 


30        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

head,"  said  this  one,  "  is  a  scandal.  At  least  that's 
what  /  say." 

"  Me,  too,"  rejoined  the  first  gossip.  "  I  always 
did  say  there  was  somethin'  very  queer  about  Mar- 
tha's first  baby.  You  know  they  was  married  in 
May " 

"  Wasn't  it  June,  dear?" 

"  Mighty  early  in  June,  then — an'  next  thing  we 
know,  along  about  Christmas " 

The  second  woman's  sharp  eyes  detected  Danny 
glancing  in  her  direction. 

"  I'd  be  a  little  careful,  dear,"  she  said  to  her 
companion,  without  lowering  her  tone.  "  Little 
pitchers  have  big  ears.  Are  you  goin'  to  Martha's 
party  next  Tuesday?  " 

The  first  woman  accepted  the  warning. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  she  said;  "  aren't  you?  " 

"Certainly;  I  wouldn't  hurt  her  feelin's  for  the 
world." 

Danny  moved  away.  He  knew  that  he  had  over- 
heard something  that  he  was  not  intended  to  over- 
hear; but  he  did  not  understand  it  or  why  he  should 
not  listen  to  whatever  was  said  by  his  mother's  guests 
in  his  father's  house.  He  wondered  why  they  had 
called  him  a  pitcher,  and  the  next  time  that  he  was 
alone  with  a  looking-glass  he  measured  his  ears. 


Ill 


PERHAPS  a  year  lies  between  this  event  and  the 
next  just  here  in  order.  Dan  thinks  it  does. 
At  any  rate,  he  had  in  the  meantime  been  taught 
to  address  his  parents  as  "  Father  "  and  "  Mother," 
always  with  capitals,  so  that  it  must  have  been  after 
Tom  Barnes's  store  was  moved  north  of  Second  Street 
and  the  family  were  talking  of  that  dignified  process 
known  as  "  building." 

The  event  now  in  question  is  his  discovery  of  the 
genus  Girl.  He  had  known,  of  course,  in  a  general 
way,  that  girls  existed;  he  had  seen  some  and  talked 
to  a  few;  but  he  had  never  yet  realized  that  there 
was  an  essential  difference  between  his  own  kind  and 
theirs.  Now  he  met  a  little  girl  on  the  front  pave- 
ment and  challenged  her  to  a  foot  race,  which  he  won 
in  a  mere  canter,  whereupon  the  little  girl  cried  and 
Danny  found  himself,  even  in  the  glow  of  his  victory, 
moved  almost  to  tears  at  the  sight  of  her  unmanly 
grief. 

"  Mother,"  he  announced,  snuggling  into  Mrs. 
Barnes's  arms  when,  that  night,  his  mother  lay  down 
beside  him  in  his  little  bed,  "  I  don't  like  girls." 

Mrs.  Barnes  smiled  magnanimously. 

"  I  was  a  girl  once,"  she  said. 

"  Oh !  "  said  Danny.  He  had  not  thought  of  that. 
He  saw  instantly 'the  necessity  of  a  synthesis  between 
his  detestation  of  girls  and  the  fact  that  his  mother 

31 


32        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

had  been  one.  He  studied  the  problem  and  presently 
solved  it.  "  But  that  was  a  long  time  ago,"  he 
said. 

*  Yes  " — and  Mrs.   Barnes  sighed — "  it  seems  a 
long  time  ago,  Danny."  / 

"  I  guess  they're  not  the  same  now,  mother." 

"  I  don't  know,  Danny.  Perhaps  they  aren't.  I 
sometimes  think  they  aren't.  But  you  oughtn't  to 
not  like  anybody." 

"  Well,  I  do.     I  don't  like  girls." 

The  moment  was  not  guarded.  She  asked  him 
why  he  did  not  like  girls. 

"  They  cry,"  said  Danny.  "  They  wear  dresses 
like  me  when  I  was  a  baby.  They're  babies  just  got 
big."  Then,  after  a  pause,  he  added:  "  They  are 
different,  ain't  they?" 

"  From  what  they  were  when  I  was  little,  Danny? 
I  say  I  don't  know.  I  sometimes  think  they  are." 

"  I  mean  different  from  boys.  Ain't  they  different, 
mother?  " 

*  Yes,  Danny,  I  dare  say.     But  you  must  go  to 
sleep  now." 

"  Mother,  why  are  they  different?  " 

Mrs.  Barnes  saw  that  she  had  let  this  cross-exam- 
ination go  too  far. 

"  Go  to  sleep,  dear,"  she  commanded. 

It  was  not  for  nothing  that  Danny  had  been  in- 
structed in  obedience.  He  flung  his  tiny  arms  about 
his  mother's  neck  and  kissed  her. 

"  All  right,"  he  said  "  good-night.  I  know  you 
wasn't  ever  no  girly  girl,  mother." 

But  the  last  question  on  his  lips  that  evening  was 
the  first  there  on  the  morning  following,  and,  with 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        33 

a  realization  that  his  mother  would  tell  him  no  more, 
Danny  bore  it  to  his  father. 

Tom  Barnes  was  struggling  into  his  last  winter's 
overcoat  to  start  for  the  store.  The  lining  of  the 
overcoat  sleeve  was  torn,  and  Tom's  day  therefore 
began*%ith  a  physical  effort. 

"  Father,"  said  Danny,  watching  his  parent's  con- 
test with  admiration  for  its  masculinity,  "  what  is 
Girls?" 

Barnes  stood  there  with  one  extended  arm  half 
in  the  sleeve  and  half  out  of  it. 

"  What's  what?  "  he  demanded. 

''Girls,"  repeated  Danny. 

"  You're  too  young  to  think  about  such  fool 
things,"  replied  Barnes.  "  Wait  till  you're  growed 
up.  Don't  ask  questions  you've  no  business  to  ask — 
an'  tell  your  mother  to  not  forget  to  sew  up  this  here 
linin'  when  I  come  home  for  dinner." 

§  2.  It  seems  quite  a  long  time  after  this  that 
another  important  puzzle  presented  itself  to  Danny. 
The  former  "  Philadelphia  Notion  Store  "  on  Elm 
Avenue  had  so  far  grown  in  size  and  grace  as  to  bear 
the  simple  sign : 


THOS.  L.  BARNES 
DRY    GOODS 


The  mighty  process  of  "  building  "  had  been  accom- 
plished, and  the  Barneses  lived  in  a  new,  large,  gray 
house  on  Oak  Street  in  the  rarified  atmosphere  of  most 
of  the  newer  Old  Families. 


34        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Won't  you  please  lay  down  with  me  for  a  little 
while,  mother?  "  pleaded  Danny,  when  Mrs.  Barnes 
kissed  him  and  tucked  the  covers  about  his  neck  up  to 
his  curly  head. 

"  Not  '  lay/  Danny,"  Mrs.  Barnes  corrected. 
"  Only  chickens  lay.  You  mean  '  lie.'  " 

14  Well,  you  used  to  say  it,  didn't  you?"  pouted 
Danny — and:  "Won't  you  lie  down  with  me  a  little 
while,  mother?  " 

"  Why,  Danny,"  she  told  him,  "  your  father  thinks 
— he — he  thinks  you're  getting  to  be  too  big  a  boy  to 
be  afraid  to  go  to  bed  nowadays." 

"  Ain't  afraid!  "  declared  Danny. 

"  Then  why  do  you  want  me?  " 

"  I  dunno,  only — I  guess  I'm  just  afraid  I'll  be 
afraid." 

"  That's  the  quickest  way  to  be  afraid,  my  boy. 
No,  I  guess  I'd  better  go  downstairs  now." 

"  But,  mother " 

"Yes,  dear?" 

"  I  wanted  to  ask  you  somepin'." 

"Will  it  take  long,  boy?" 

"  I  dunno.    That's  what  you'll  know,  mother." 

"Well,  what  is  it,  Danny?" 

"  Oh — lots  o'  things.  Please  lay — lie  down, 
mother." 

"  No,  I  mustn't.  Just  tell  me  what  it  is  you  want 
to  ask  me,  Danny." 

"Sit  down,  anyhow;  won't  you  please,  mother?" 

The  room  was  in  nearly  complete  darkness.  For 
some  months  she  had  been  lowering  the  light  farther 
and  farther  every  evening.  Now  she  could  not  see 
her  little  boy's  face.  Nevertheless,  she  felt  the  plead- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        35 

ing  that  strained  there,  and  it  was  hard  for  her  not 
to  grant  him  his  wish. 

"  Tell  me  what  you  want  to  ask,  Danny,"  she 
said. 

"  It's Oh,  I  can't  talk  to  you  'way  off  there, 

mother!  Honest  Injun,  I  can't." 

Mrs.  Barnes  sat  upon  the  side  of  the  narrow  bed. 
She  had  promised  her  husband  not  to  lie  there,  so  she 
compromised  with  her  conscience  by  sitting  on  the 
extreme  edge  and  making  herself  uncomfortable. 

"Now,  then,"  she  said.  "  Just  a  minute,  you 
know." 

There  was  a  flash  of  silence. 

"  Well,"  said  Danny  at  last,  "  it's  about  that  lady 
'cross  the  street." 

The  mother  had  a  chill  of  premonition. 

44  What  lady?"  she  asked. 

44  Oh,  you  know,"  said  Danny.  44  That  lady  what 
used  to  be  so  thin  an'  ain't.  Mother,  what's  the 
matter  with  her?  " 

Mrs.  Barnes  drew  a  long  breath.  She  wished  that 
she  had  not  sat  down.  How  under  the  sun  could 
children  come  to  think  of  such  things?  She  wished 
that  she  knew  how  to  execute  some  retreat  that  would 
forbid  pursuit;  but  she  was  seated  and  did  not  know 
how,  in  the  circumstances,  properly  to  rise;  she  had 
advanced  so  far  that  she  had  been  hopelessly  am- 
bushed. For  the  first  time,  she  began  to  feel  toward 
Danny  something  of  the  deference  that  she  felt  to- 
ward his  father.  For  the  first  time  she  effectively 
realized  that,  thoygh  this  was  a  child,  it  was  a  man- 
child.  Even  in  her  little  son  she  was  confronting 
the  might  and  mystery  of  the  Other  Sex. 


36        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  stammered.  "  I — I  suppose 
she's  sick — I  guess " 

"She  ain't  sick,"  said  Danny.  "She's  got  red 
cheeks.  People  as  is  sick  ain't  got  red  cheeks." 

"  Sometimes  they  have,  Danny." 

"Then,  how's  she  sick,  mother?" 

Mrs.  Barnes  again  drew  a  deep  breath.  Some- 
thing, she  clearly  saw,  must  be  said  and  said  quickly. 
She  felt  her  boy's  hand  reaching  for  her  own  in  the 
darkness,  and  she  seized  his  and  held  it  tight. 

41 1  don't  know  how  she  is  sick,"  lied  the  mother; 
"  but  she  is  quite  sick,  Danny." 

"  Will  she  die,  mother?  "  asked  Danny  hopefully. 

"  No,  she  won't  die.  I  heard  to-night  that  she's 
going  to  get  well.  But  she's  really  been  very  sick, 
and  so  she  has  been  sent  something — something  to 
comfort  her." 

"  What's  she  been  sent,  mother?  " 

"  Something  that "  Mrs.  Barnes'  hand  quiv- 
ered. "  Wouldn't  you  like  a  little  playmate, 
Danny?  "  she  broke  off. 

"  I  dunno,"  said  Danny,  impatient  of  this  evasion. 
"  What's  she  been  sent,  mother?  " 

"  Wait  a  minute,  Danny.  Answer  my  question 
first.  Wouldn't  you  like  a  new  playmate,  my 
boy?" 

"  What  kind?  "  asked  Danny,  warily. 

"  A  new  one,"  said  his  mother. 

"  Not  a  girl,  I  wouldn't,"  said  Danny. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  hear  that,  Danny,  for  I  am  afraid 
this  is  a  girl." 

The  child  tossed  petulantly  under  the  covers. 

"A  girl?    What's  a  girl,  mother?  "  he  asked.    "I 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        37 

do  wish  you'd  tell  me.     Do  you  mean  this  new  one 
you're  talking  about's  a  girl?  " 

"  Yes,  Danny.     Now  I  must  really  go,  my  boy." 

"  An1  is  that  what  they've  given  this  lady  to  com- 
fort her?" 

"  Yes.    Good-night,  Danny." 

"  But,  mother " 

"  Yes?  " 

"  I  shouldn't  think  babies'd  comfort  anybody." 

"  You  just  don't  understand,  my  dear." 

Danny  thought  that  over  and  gave  it  up.  But  he 
did  not  let  go  his  mother's  hand,  and  presently  he 
asked : 

"  So  they  brought  this  lady  one?  " 

"  Yes." 

Danny  sat  straight  up  in  bed. 

"  Mother,"  he  demanded,  "  how  do  babies  come?  " 

It  was  the  question  that,  for  the  last  two  minutes, 
she  had  been  expecting,  the  question  that  she  should 
have  been  expecting  since  the  first  that  he  had  ever 
asked.  Yet  she  had  no  answer  ready. 

"  I — I  don't  know,"  she  quavered.  "  But  I  must 
go  downstairs,  dear." 

"You  don't  know?  Why,  mother,  how  did  I 
come?" 

If  he  could  have  seen  her  face,  he  would  have 
seen  it  hot  with  a  curious  shame. 

"  I — I  mean,"  she  stammered,  "  it's  the  doctor. 
The  doctor  brings  them."  She  rose  hurriedly.  "  It 
is  late.  You've  got  to  go  to  sleep." 

"  Brings  'em  in  ,with  him?  "  asked  Danny. 

"  Yes,  yes.     Now  go  to  sleep  I  " 

"  All  right,    I'm  goin',  mother.    In  a  basket?  " 


38        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Yes." 

"  But,  mother " 

She  had  gained  the  door. 

"  If  you  don't  go  straight  to  sleep,"  she  said,  "  I'll 
tell  your  father." 

The  habit  of  obedience  momentarily  triumphed. 

"  All  right,"  he  said  again,  as  he  turned  over  and 
drew  up  his  knees.  "  But  I  wish  you'd  kiss  me  good- 
night." 

"  I  did  kiss  you,"  said  Mrs.  Barnes,  almost  sharply. 

"  You  ain't  cross?  " 

"  No." 

'*  Then  do  kiss  me  again,  mother.     Please." 

She  came  to  him  and  hugged  him  close. 

"  Good-night,"  she  whispered. 

"Good-night,"  said  Danny.  "  Snagsie  Fry  says 
his  mother  toF  him  they  come  down  the  rainspout." 

Mrs.  Barnes  started. 

*  You  mustn't  believe  all  you  hear,"  she  said. 
"  Go  to  sleep  now." 

"  Yes,  mother.     It  ain't  the  rainspout,  is  it?" 

She  felt  herself  hopelessly  committed  to  the  other 
theory. 

"  No,"  she  said. 

"  I'm  sorry  about  that,"  said  Danny.  "  I'm  sorry 
Snagsie'd  tell  a  story."  Snagsie  was  the  youthful  alias 
of  Lysander  Fry. 

"  I  don't  think  he  told  a  story.  I  think  he  just 
forgot." 

"  No,  he  didn't,  neither.  He  come  right  straight 
from  his  mother  to  me,  mother." 

"  Very  well.    Good-night,  now,  Danny." 

He  returned  her  embrace. 


T<Pr 

THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        39 

"  Good-night,"  he  said. 

She  held  him  for -a  minute  tighter,  even,  than  usual, 
and  then  she  whispered : 

"  And  God  bless  you,  Danny.1* 

§  3.  In  the  room  below  Tom  Barnes  was  reading 
that  morning's  Philadelphia  Press.  He  was  in  shirt- 
sleeves and  carpet-slippers  as  on  the  night  when  they 
first  discussed  the  rearing  of  Danny. 

"  What  do  you  think  that  boy's  been  askin'  me 
now?"  said  Mrs.  Barnes. 

Tom  did  not  like  guessing  games. 

"  What?  "he  demanded. 

"  He's  been  askin'  me  where  babies  come  from." 

Tom's  long  upper  lip  tightened. 

"  What'd  you  tell  him?  "  he  asked. 

Mrs.  Barnes  explained,  and  while  she  did  so  her 
husband's  face  cleared.  « 

"  Oh,  well,"  he  said,  "  that's  about  what  they  toF 
me.  I  guess  it  don't  much  matter — not  really.  A 
boy's  a  boy.  Like  as  not,  he'll  forget  all  about  it 
to-morrow." 

But  Tom  did  not  reflect  that  the  hot-air  heater  in 
the  room  in  which  he  was  sitting  was  fed  from  the 
same  flue  that  heated  the  bedroom  of  his  son  directly 
overhead ;  and  so  flurried  had  been  her  exit  from  the 
boy's  bedroom  that  Mrs.  Barnes  had  neglected  to 
close  the  heater  before  leaving. 

The  major  part  of  what  she  repeated  and  what 
her  husband  said,  Danny  could  distinctly  hear. 

§  4.  Late  the  next  afternoon  Danny  trotted,  as  he 
had  often  done  before,  to  the  door  of  the  kitchen  at 
the  rear  of  the  house  opposite. 


40        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  G'wan  with  yez,"  called  the  cook.  "  No  cakes 
the  day,  me  son.  These  be  busy  times  here  since 
yiste'd'y." 

Danny's  big  eyes  were  very  serious. 

"  I  know  why,"  said  he. 

"Why?" 

"  They's  a  baby." 

"What?  Bless  the  darlin'  child!  G'wan,  I'm 
tellin'  yez." 

"  Yes,  they  is,"  said  Danny.  "  They's  a  nurse 
what  had  it  at  the  window.  I  seeji  it." 

The  cook's  round  face  broke  into  a  hundred  dim- 
ples. 

"An'  can  ye  bate  that?"  she  demanded;  and 
then,  her  arms  akimbo,  she  added:  "  'Tis  a  grand 
baby." 

"I  don't  think  so,"  said  Danny.     "  It's  too  red." 

"  Red,  is  it?  "  laughed  the  cook.  "  Faith,  an'  so 
was  you.  G'wan  now;  I'm  that  busy  I ' 

"  Show  me  the  basket  first,"  said  Danny. 

"What  basket?" 

;'  The  new  one." 

"  New  basket?  What  for  do  ye  be  wantin'  to  see 
a  new  basket?  There's  no  new  one  in  the  house 
this  twelvemonth." 

Danny  was  frankly  annoyed.  His  eyes  began  to 
grow  wet. 

"  Did  the  doc — doctor  take  it  home  with  him  for 
the  next?  "  he  asked,  in  disappointment.  Then  he 
explained:  "  I  mean  the  one  what  he  brought  the  baby 


in." 


The  fat  cook  slowly  collapsed  on  the  doorstep  and 
flung   her   apron   over   her   head.     At  first   Danny 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        41 

thought  that  she  was  crying,  but  suddenly  from  be- 
neath the  apron  there  rolled  an  uncontrollable  Celtic 
guffaw. 

And  then  the  little  lad's  own  eyes  overflowed,  and 
he  had  run  away  before  the  cook  was  aware  that  he 
was  gone.  For  he  knew  that  he  was  being  laughed 
at  because  he  had  repeated  what  his  own  mother  had 
told  him,  and,  from  a  note  in  that  laughter,  he  knew 
that,  somehow,  he  must  not  ask  his  mother  why. 

§  5.  On  that  evening  Mrs.  Barnes  was  not  urged 
to  stay  with  her  little  son.  He  kissed  her  good-night 
swiftly,  a.nd,  after  she  had  gone,  leaving  the  door,  as 
usual,  a}ir,  he  lay  long  awake,  wondering  and  won- 
dering. 

Presently  the  moonlight  entered  the  window  and 
reminded  him  of  something. 

He  rose  very  slowly  and  went  to  the  door.  He 
closed  it.  Then,  his  bare  feet  tiptoeing  over  the 
chilly  floor,  he  went  to  the  window  and  looked  out. 
The  rainspout  descended  close  to  the  window,  and 
Danny  knew  that  this  rainspout  was  precisely  the  size 
of  that  on  the  house  opposite.  He  studied  the  rain- 
spout carefully.  He  shook  his  curly  head.  It  was 
a  puzzle,  and  yet  he  now  knew  that  it  was  one  upon 
which  he  must  consult  none  of  his  elders.  Could  it  be 
possible  that  the  cook  had  lied?  Or  would  his  own 
mother — — 

"Anyhow,"  he  said,  "it  ain't  the  rainspout.  I 
seen  the  baby,  an'  it  ain't  the  rainspout.  That's  too 
little,  that  is."  > 

§  6.     Don't  forget  him  as  he  stands  there.    Don't 


42        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

forget  him — and  don't  laugh  at  him  too  much.  A 
little  later  and  you  will  not  want  to  laugh  at  him  at 
all ;  and  when  that  time  comes,  try  to  stop  a  moment 
and  look  backward  at  him  as  you  see  him  now:  a 
clean  little  soul  in  a  clean  little  body,  a  shivering  figure 
in  canton-flannel  nightdrawers,  standing  in  his  bare 
feet  by  the  window,  with  the  silver  moonlight  bathing 
him  from  his  tumbled  curly  hair  to  his  pink  heels, 
and  his  wide  blue  eyes  looking  up  at  the  indigo  sky, 
as  if  he  sought  there  the  answer^to  the  riddle. 


• 


.     V- 


ONCE  upon  a  time  a  traveling  salesman,  new 
to  the  "  territory,"  came  to  Americus  and,  in 
his  quest  for  information  concerning  the  mer- 
chants upon  whom  he  was  to  call,  fell  in  with  Freddie 
Fry. 

Now,  Freddie  Fry  it  was  that,  some  years  before, 
had  espoused  the  daughter  of  Calvin  Green.  When 
the  match  was  made,  or  enforced,  neither  party  to  it 
understood  the  nature  of  such  an  alliance,  and  so 
Mrs.  Fry  had  become  a  thin,  suffering  woman,  and 
her  husband  the  town  drunkard.  Life  had  been  no 
kinder  to  Freddie  than  Freddie  was  to  his  wife,  and 
he  retaliated  upon  life  by  growing  into  a  disciple  of 
the  unhappy  St.  Thomas.  In  his  sober  moments  he 
worked  little  and  read  a  great  deal,  but  he  was  a 
weakling  and  he  knew  it;  it  was,  therefore,  only  hu- 
man of  him  to  doubt  the  appearance  of  righteous- 
ness in  his  fellow-men.  Though  his  convictions  were 
determined  in  regard  to  predestination,  his  actions 
were  erratic  in  regard  to  drink;  and  though  even 
through  the  muddy  surface  of  Mr.  Fry  one  caught 
equivocal  glimpses  of  the  angel  imprisoned  in  the 
man,  something — perhaps  it  was  the  occasion  when  he 
did  not  knock  any  brains  out  of  Mr.  Barnes'  head — 
prevented  him  from  holding  too  high  an  opinion  of 
Danny's  father. 

"What  sort  df"  a  fellow  is  this  Barnes?  "  asked  the 
salesman. 

43 


44        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

They  ^erp^seated  in  comfortably  tilted  chairs  on 
the  street  bide  of  the  gutter  that  ran  its  open  course 
in  front  of  the  AcMms  Hotel,  the  flashily  dressed 
drummer  with  a  long  cigar  in  his  mouth,  and  Freddie, 
unshaven  and  coatless,  also  with  a  cigar — from  the 
drummer's  case — his  bleared  eyes  meditatively  fas- 
ened  upon  the  barroom  door. 

"  Parnes,"  said  Freddie,  in  the  tone  of  one  that 
admits  a  grudged  truth,  "  is  among  the  most  re- 
spected persons  in  this  here  town  still. " 

He  was  one  of  those  little  men,  was  Freddie  Fry, 
who  seem  to  try  to  make  up  for  their  small  physique 
by  their  large  talk,  as  if  they  feel  that  society  owes 
every  individual  a  certain  space,  and  that  words  are 
the  miniature  person's  only  means  of  filling  the  space 
that  is  his.  So  Freddie  talked  long  and  determinedly, 
and  with  a  strong  Pennsylvania-German  accent. 

"  Not  as  I  take  the  town's  opinion,"  Freddie  went 
on  to  explain,  singing  the  accented  syllables.  "  I  don't 
still.  The  trouble  of  this  here  town  is  they  ogcept 
all  the  prowerbs  with  no  more  question  as  they  ogcept 
greenpacks.  They're  all  afraid  of  Friday  an'  keep 
away  of  sirteen;  they  git  a  chill  still  if  you  raise  a 
umbreller  indoors  a'ready,  or  a  lookin'-glass  like  is 
broke :  they  all  suffer  from  that  there  mania  as  we're 
polite  enough  to  call  superstition.  Yes,"  he  added, 
"  an'  their  worst  superstition  is  money.  They've  got 
spasms  of  anthusiasm  for  justice,  but  a  gronic  disease 
of  reference  for  wealth." 

The  philosopher  kept  his  red  eyes  on  the  barroom 
door  opposite.  Every  now  and  then  the  door  would 
open  for  some  fortunate  customer  and  let  out  a  smell 
of  sour  hops.  Freddie  sniffed  appreciatively. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        45 

"Then  Barnes  has  money?"  asked  th*  drum- 
mer. 

A  judicial  answer  was  weighed  in  the  balance. 

"  Some.  But  he'll  have  more  yet.  Not  that  he's 
rich  like  the  Kents,  but  the  Kents  is  more  stuck  up 
as  he  is.  The  Kents  got  their  money  one  spring  an' 
was  a  old  fambly  by  the  next  Christmas." 

"  But  about  Barnes — — "  said  the  drummer. 

"  I  mind,"  pursued  the  imperturbable  philosopher, 
spitting  thoughtfully  into  the  distance,  "  how  I  asked 
old  man  Kent — that's  the  pop  o'  this  here  one — if 
they  was  a  old  fambly  in  the  old  country,  where  was 
their  old  chiny,  an'  he  says  the  woyage  ofer  the  ocean 
was  so  rough  it  all  got  broke.  He  reads  in  the 
paper  where  it  says  claw-feet  furniture's  the  fashion, 
so  old  Kent  sends  for  Henery  Schmutzer — Henery's 
the  garpenter — an'  says:  'Henery,'  he  says,  'here's 
twenty  dollars  still.  You  git  your  turnin'-lathe  an' 
make  me  some  nice  claw  feets  an'  put  a  set  on  efery 
stick  of  furniture  in  this  here  house,'  he  says." 

"  If  Barnes  is  well-to-do,"  inquired  the  drummer, 
"why  don't  he  dress  better?  They  say  he  dresses 
mighty  common." 

Freddie  smiled. 

"What?"  he  asked.  "Put  on  his  best  Sunday 
glothes  on  week-days?  That'd  make  Parnes  sink  he 
was  to  a  funeral." 

"  Well,  but  what  I'm  trying  to  get  at  is:  what  sort 
of  a  fellow  is  he?" 

Mr.  Fry  removed  his  cigar  from  his  mouth,  but 
still  watched  the  .barroom  door.  There  was  no  hur- 
rying him. 

"He's  highly  plessed,"  said  Freddie;  "  an   so  he 


46        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

sinks  wejl  of  himself.  Oh,  I  guess  he's  just  like  the 
rest  of  us — ogceptin'  the  mortar." 

"The  mortar?" 

"  Um.  He's  a  few  good  qualities  mixed  with  a 
lot  of  bad  ones,  an'  all  held  togesser  by  the  mortar 
of  conceit.  Not  but  what  he  has  wirtue.  He  has, 
has  Parnes,  an'  not  the  sort  of  general  wirtue  as  won't 
stoop  to  particularities,  either.  But  then  that  makes 
him  so  often  right,  an'  Parnes  is  one  o'  them  wiolent 
men  as  is  always  at  their  worst  when  they're  right 
a'ready.  No  one  as  is  below  him  kin  stand  ag'in 
him:  he's  stupid  an'  upright — that's  my  opinion  of 
him — an'  it's  a  irresistable  compination." 

"  Sharp  at  a  bargain?  "  asked  the  drummer. 

"  Razor,"  answered  Freddie.  "  Only  he  won't 
cheat  you.  He  don't  cheat  nopody  put  his  customers, 
an'  he's  got  to  try  to  cheat  them  still,  because  they 
goes  to  his  store  prepared  to  pid  less  as  any  price 
Parnes  might  ask." 

The  drummer  chuckled. 

"  Then  I'll  get  along  with  him  all  right,"  said  he. 

u  I  ain't  so  sure,"  slowly  commented  Freddie. 
'You  ain't  a  foreigner,  ain't?" 

"Me?     Not  much.     I'm  from  Chicago." 

"  Um.  Well,  somesing  is  besser  as  nossing.  But 
Chicago's  pretty  near  a  foreigner,  an'  Parnes  he  don't 
like  people  as  was  unlucky  enough  to  be  born  some- 
where he  don't  know  about."  Freddie  paused.  "  An' 
then  there's  his  relitchen,"  he  added. 

"His  what?"  asked  the  drummer. 

"  What  he  beliefs:  heaven  an'  hell  like." 

"I  don't  think  I'll  let  that  interfere,"  said  the 
drummer. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        47 

"  You  can't  neffcr  tell  yet,"  replied  Mr.  Fry,  his 
contemplative  eyes  seeming  to  see  through  that  bar- 
room door.  "  I  ain't  kickin'  with  Fames'  relitchen, 
though  myself  I'm  a  Prespeterian  just  now.  When 
I  look  at  my  friends,  I  see  as  all  kinds  of  churches 
kin  make  lots  of  men  of  splendid  character  an'  just  as 
many  as  ain't  got  no  character  at  all.  It's  like  I  says 
to  our  minister  when  I  was  a  Conkregation'ist.  I 
says : '  Fames'  relitchen  must  be  good  for  him,'  I  says, 
'  because  in  prayer-meetin's  over  to  his  church  it  makes 
him  say  such  wise  things  still.'  The  minister  he  sniffs 
like,  an'  he  says :  '  I'm  told  it  makes  him  use  a  deal 
o'  words  as  he  don't  know  what  they  mean.'  But 
I  says  to  our  minister,  I  says :  *  Do  you  want  a  man 
to  say  wise  things  an'  understand  them,  too?  '  I  says. 
'  No,'  I  says- 

"  Oh,  I  wasn't  worried  about  Barnes'  religion," 
the  drummer  interrupted. 

"  Well,"  said  Freddie,  "  you  can't  sometimes  tell. 
Relitchen's  a  slippery  sing:  you  sink  you've  got  it, 
an'  then,  first  sing  you  know,  you  ain't;  an'  you  sink 
it's  locked  up  where  it  won't  interfere  with  you,  an* 
then,  first  sing  you  know,  it's  broke  loose  and's  in 
the  way.  If  they  only  keeps  tight  hold  on  themselfs, 
there  ain't  nossing  two  men  can't  agree  on  still  except 
what's  real  relitchen  an'  what's  a  real  joke.  Faith's 
somesing  as  can't  be  had  for  the  askin'  an'  can't  be 
lost  for  conwenience." 

"  You're  a  righteous  man  yourself,  aren't  you,  Mr. 
Fry?  "  smiled  the  drummer. 

"  Yes,"  admitted  Freddie;  "  but  not  always  church- 
righteous.  Relitcheous  talk's  terrible  dryin'  to  the 
throat,"  he  added;  "  but  if  you  want  to  know " 


48        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  I  want  to  know  about  Barnes." 

"  Well,"  Freddie  sighed,  "  Parnes  he  knows  more 
about  what's  in  God's  mind  as  he  knows  what's  in 
his  own  son's — a  lot  besser.  He's  sometimes  too  fa- 
miliar with  God,  Parnes  is — but  he's  somesing  grand 
at  prayer-meetin's ;  of  course  he  prays  to  God,  but 
you  pet  he  don't  forget  the  conkregation's  got  ears. 
He's  so  sorry  for  us  sinners,  I  often  says  Parnes  don't 
know  it,  but  he's  soured  by  the  sings  he  neffer  done. 
He's  kep'  himself  down.  It's  like  makin'  krout :  he's 
put  the  stone  on  the  cabbage,  an'  the  cabbage's  just 
stayed  there  an'  fermented  like.  He's  proud  because 
he's  done  right,  but  now  and  again  he  guesses  he 
might  'a'  had  a  awful  good  time  of  it  if  he'd  wunst 
in  a  way  done  wrong." 

These  were  not  precisely  the  details  that  the  sales- 
man desired  to  learn;  but  he  was  a  good-natured  sales- 
man and  rather  lazy,  so  he  let  Freddie  run  on  as 
merrily  as  the  gentle  gutter  water  at  their  feet. 

"  I  thought  you  said  the  man  was  pleased  with 
himself?  "  he  remarked. 

The  cigar  had  been  burned  to  the  point  where  it 
endangered  Freddie's  ragged  mustache.  He  osten- 
tatiously dropped  the  butt  and  set  his  heavy  boot  upon 
it. 

"Who?  Parnes?  "said  Freddie.  "  You  pet  he  is. 
Look  at  the  kind  of  a  pop  he  is — just  like  the  rest  of 
us:  can't  see  anysing  finer  as  bringing  up  our  children 
just  like  we  was  brought  up:  propogate  your  kind, 
you  know,  not  a  besser  kind,  but  your  own  kind  still." 

"You  have  your  own  theories  of  parenthood?" 
asked  the  drummer. 

"  I  got  a  little  poy,  too,"  said  Freddie,  "  an'  more 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        49 

comin';  but  I  don't  pretend  to  practice  all  I  preach 
a'ready." 

"But  Barnes  does?" 

"Oh,  Parnes  ain't  perfect;  but  the  world  ain't 
neither,  an'  Parnes  is  like  most  of  the  ozzer  people 
in  it." 

The  drummer  thought  it  time  to  get  down  to  busi- 
ness. 

"  I  want  you  to  tell  me  about  his  store,"  he  said. 

Then  two  things  happened  to  bring  to  birth  what 
was  largest  in  Freddie's  mind.  Out  of  the  corner 
of  one  eye  he  saw  his  father-in-law  approaching  from 
the  direction  of  Second  Street,  and  with  the  full  gaze 
of  the  other  he  saw  the  barroom  door  swing  wide  to 
permit  the  entrance  of  his  closest  crony.  Fear  joined 
hands  with  inclination. 

"  The  real  elixir  of  life  is  pottled  in  pond,"  said 
Freddie.  He  got  to  his  feet.  "  You  take  me  to  some 
of  that  there.  The  open  street  ain't  no  fit  place  to 
talk  business." 

§  2.  In  spite,  however,  of  Freddie's  endeavor  to 
be  fair,  his  ancient  difference  with  Tom  Barnes  and 
his  native  inclination  to  think  too  much  about  other 
people  probably  prevented  him  from  doing  full  jus- 
tice to  that  merchant.  What  Mr.  Fry  had  said  was 
as  far  from  the  truth  on  one  side  as  it  was  far  from 
the  town's  opinion  on  the  other,  for  the  town  es- 
teemed Barnes  highly,  and  in  reality  Barnes  was  no 
more  than  typical  of  his  generation. 

The  merchant  pf  Americus  had  prospered,  but  by 
no  means  that  either  he  or  any  other  business  man 
would  Lave  considered  ambiguous.  In  all  his  com- 


5Q        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

mercial  dealings,  in  all  his  dealings,  he  was  scrupu- 
lously honest — as  commercial  men  esteem  honesty. 
Not  all  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  would  have  in- 
duced him  to  steal  a  cent  and  court  eternal  damna- 
tion; for  though  one  had  risen  from  the  dead  to 
testify  against  it,  Barnes  would  never  have  doubted 
the  existence  of  a  material  hell.  He  expected  his 
business  to  grow ;  he  knew  that,  since  a  warning  from 
Dr.  Ireland  following  upon  the  unforeseen  difficulties 
that  attended  Dan's  birth,  his  family  must  not  in- 
crease. Yet,  if  he  loved  the  dissipation  of  prayer- 
meeting  oratory,  in  his  own  home  he  was  no  wielder 
of  the  heavenly  shafts,  no  preacher  and  no  threatener ; 
and  in  his  shop,  if  he  believed  in  profits  as  sincerely 
as  he  believed  in  Abaddon,  that  was  because  he  be- 
lieved also  that  the  duty  of  the  merchant  is  to  buy 
for  as  little  as  possible  and  sell  for  as  much,  and  to 
get  as  much  work  for  as  small  wages  as  may  be.  All 
of  which,  and  his  pride  in  which,  did  not  prevent  him 
from  loving  his  quiet  wife  and  his  son  with  a  love 
that  was  deeper  than  his  pride:  perhaps  so  much 
deeper  that,  to  outsiders,  it  was  not  always  observ- 
able. 

Nor,  in  parental  affection,  was  Mrs.  Barnes  want- 
ing. She  said  little.  Sometimes  it  seemed  as  if  she 
was  given  small  opportunity  to  speak,  and  that,  when 
the  chance  did  come,  long  reflection  upon  what  she 
had  thought  to  say  proved  the  intended  words  un- 
worthy of  utterance ;  but  more  often  her  silences  were 
the  silences  of  devotion.  This  mother's  was  that 
goodness  of  heart  which  is  inarticulate. 

So  Danny's  home  education  was  a  simple  matter. 
It  comprised  five  commandments:  to  be  honest  and 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        51 

open  in  word  and  deed,  and  to  esteem  those  who  were 
honest;  to  "  succeed,"  and  to  honor  those  who  suc- 
ceeded; to  acquire  "means,"  and  to  defer  to  those 
who  had  acquired  them;  to  become  an  employer  and 
commander,  and  to  obey  those  who  employed  and 
commanded;  and  finally  to  respect  his  parents,  be- 
cause his  mother  embodied  goodness  and  because  his 
father  was  an  exemplar  of  the  preceding  four  great 
laws.  At  Sunday  school  he  learned  the  same  lesson, 
and,  if  he  acquired  there  a  bowing  acquaintance  with 
sundry  other  virtues,  he  came,  through  his  prelimi- 
nary traifrkig,  naturally  to  attribute  those  virtues  to 
his  parents,  too.  It  is  the  inevitable  result  of  this 
process  of  instruction  that  the  pupil  soon  confuses  the 
teacher  with  the  thing  taught,  and  so  Danny  personi- 
fied the  qualities  in  Thomas  Barnes  and  Sarah  his 
wife. 

The  events  of  the  little  boy's  earliest  years  at  day 
school  are  not  very  legibly  engraved  upon  Dan's  mem- 
ory. He  knows  that  the  first  thing  taught  him  was 
deference  to  established  authority:  he  must  accept 
his  instructor's  dicta  as  final;  he  must  "keep" 
something  that  was  called  "order";  he  must  keep 
silence,  too;  and  he  must  obey.  After  that,  he  could 
learn  his  letters;  learn  whole  words  with  pictures  to 
help  him;  learn  at  last — he  will  never,  at  any 
rate,  forget  the  joy  of  that! — to  read  entire  sen- 
tences : 

"  Dog.    This  is  a  dog.    The  dog  runs. 

"  After. 

"  Cat.    This  is  a  cat. 

"  St^e  the  dog.    See  the  cat. 

"  The  clog  runs  after  the  cat." 


* 


52        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Yes,  there  it  was — a  whole  sentence  that  made  sense ! 
And,  still  more  wonderful,  there  was  the  picture  of 
a  Newfoundland  dog  that  anybody  could  see  was 
really  running  after  a  cat. 

Danny's  first  love-affair  resulted:  he  fell  in  love 
with  his  teacher. 

He  used  to  gather  great  bunches  of  phlox  or  sweet 
william  in  the  back  yard  at  home  and  smuggle  them 
to  school  under  his  coat,  where  the  boys  would  not 
see  them.  Before  school  opened,  he  would  surrepti- 
tiously place  these  bunches  in  the  glass  of  water  that 
stood,  unsuspiciously  waiting,  on  the  altar  which,  to 
common  minds,  appeared  to  be  no  more  than  the 
teacher's  desk.  But  he  never  told  the  teacher  who  it 
was  that  made  this  offering.  It  was  enough  for  him 
to  see  her  put  her  pretty  nose  among  the  flowers ;  and 
when,  one  day,  she  asked  him  if  he  were  the  boy  that 
had  been  making  her  these  floral  gifts,  he  blushed  so 
hard  that  his  heart  got  into  his  aching  throat,  and 
he  ran  away.  Only  his  parents'  example  of  truth- 
fulness withheld  at  his  lips  the  lying  denial  that 
clamored  there. 

This  tender  association  did  not,  however,  last.  The 
teacher  married  and  moved  to  Doncaster  and  was 
replaced  by  a  plainer  and  more  competent  woman, 
whom  Danny  immediately  detested.  And  then  the 
lad  passed  into  the  Second  Reader  and  the  care  of 
a  narrow  man  in  a  broad  coat,  a  man  with  a  high 
forehead  and  fair  hair  and  near-sighted  eyes,  who 
looked  like  an  owl  and  talked  like  a  parrot  and  re- 
enforced  a  native  sort  of  lamblike  virtue  by  an  ac- 
quired proficiency  with  a  rattan  cane. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        53 

§  3.  Chronologically  considered,  Dan's  recollec- 
tions of  his  childhood  are,  of  course,  in  desperate 
confusion.  In  all  our  minds  so  much  is  set  down 
undated,  so  much  that  we  have  been  told  is  written 
among  the  things  seen,  that  always  order  and  often 
authenticity  become  impossible.  The  page  of  mem- 
ory is  only  so  big:  as  you  live  along,  you  must  rub 
out  a  great  deal  that  is  trivial  if  you  would  retain 
a  little  that  is  worth  while.  Nevertheless,  when  we 
come  to  middle  age,  we  find,  now  and  then,  that  many 
of  the  larger  records  have  somehow  disappeared, 
leaving  clear  this  or  that  broken  line  of  an  earlier 
inscription,  as  antiquarians,  having  rubbed  the  sur- 
face of  a  scrawled  parchment,  can  decipher  passages 
of  a  younger  chronicle  beneath. 

Among  these  trifling  memories  of  childhood  which 
are  written  so  heavily  as  to  last  when  later  blots  have 
been  erased,  there  stands,  in  Dan's  case,  the  unvary- 
ing menu  of  the  Sunday  mid-afternoon  dinner  of 
roast  beef  and  mashed  potatoes,  macaroni  and  cheese, 
onions  boiled  in  cream;  a  general  mingling  of  aromas 
that  preceded  the  sounding  of  the  dinner-bell;  the 
heavy  gorging  that  followed,  and  the  subsequent  dis- 
appearance of  the  overfed  elders  for  their  weekly  nap. 
He  recalls  his  first  fight  when  he  "  gave "  Lester 
Froenfield  a  black  eye,  and  when  Lester  brought  the 
blood  from  Dan's  nose,  and  each  proclaimed  himself 
the  victor.  There  are  glimpses  of  mumble-peg  and 
tops,  of  kites  and  hare-and-hounds,  of  wading  in  the 
forest  creeks  and,  later,  of  swimming  about  the  rafts 
in  the  river.  Each  amusement  had  its  proper  time, 
all  were  apportioned  to  seasons  with  limits  as  pre- 
cisely defin  *d  as  these  of  the  hunting-seasons  for  elder 


54        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

folk,  or  the  social  season  for  persons  in  the  big  towns. 
What  those  limits  are  Dan  could  not  now  tell  you; 
nor  could  he  even  tell  you  whether  he  first  flew  a 
kite  before  he  was  instructed  in  mumble-peg,  or 
whether  he  knew  a  "  glassy  "  from  an  "  aggie  "  be- 
fore he  acquired  the  u  dog-stroke  "  in  the  river.  But 
he  knows  that  these  things  were,  that  they  were  even 
the  important  realities  of  his  younger  existence,  and 
that,  somewhere  very  early  among  them,  appeared 
the  Vision  of  the  City. 

The  City,  to  a  small-town  boy,  always  means  that 
city  nearest  to  hand,  and  always  typifies  Romance. 
In  Danny's  instance  it  was  Philadelphia,  and  even 
while  he  was  dreaming  of  killing  Indians  in  that 
never-never  land  which  boys'  books  used  vaguely  to 
describe  as  The  Frontier,  he  was  also  desiring  Phila- 
delphia. He  knew,  of  course,  that  he  was  to  grow 
up  to  a  share  of  his  father's  business;  but  he  wished, 
somewhere  between  the  end  of  school  and  the  delecta- 
ble time  when  he  should  be  a  man,  to  go  to  the  City. 
It  might  even  be  New  York.  He  did  not  know  New 
York;  he  did  not  know  Philadelphia;  but  what  he 
wanted  was  The  City,  however  named,  with  its  crowds 
of  people  on  the  streets,  as  if  every  day  were  circus- 
day,  and  its  great  stores,  bigger  even  thaA  his  fa- 
ther's, and  its  rows  and  rows  of  houses  that  covered 
fifty  times  as  much  ground  as  the  admired  and  hated 
Doncaster.  Small  as  he  then  was,  he  felt  that  in  The 
City  was  at  once  the  real  school  and  the  real  battle- 
field; that  he  must  somehow  win  there  the  spurs  with 
which  he  should  later  goad  his  charger  to  victory  in 
Americus;  that  The  City  was  the  place  for  the  mak- 
ing of  "  success  "  and  the  cultivation  of  "  means." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        55 

§  4.  Every  day  when  he  came  home  from  school 
Danny  would  pass  a  little  girl  going  home  from  a 
lower  school.  She  was  a  very  little  girl  indeed,  with 
a  funny  dark  pigtail  down  her  back  and  rosy  cheeks 
and  big,  inquiring  brown  eyes.  For  ever  and  ever  so 
long  she  was  altogether  beneath  his  notice;  but  one 
afternoon,  when  he  was  uncompanioned,  though  he 
passed  her  as  gayly  and  regardlessly  as  usual,  some- 
thing made  him  turn  his  head  to  look  back  at  her — 
and  there  she  was  looking  back  at  him. 

He  was  himself,  at  this  period,  not  an  attractive 
object.  His  hair,  in  its  transitional  stage,  was  of  no 
particular  color  and  extremely  disorderly.  Somehow, 
it  refused  to  "  stay  brushed."  He  was  freckled  and 
snub-nosed.  His  sleeves  could  never  keep  pace  with 
the  growth  of  his  wrists;  his  black  stockings  sagged, 
and,  his  shoes  being  chronically  run  down  at  the  heels, 
,  his  walk  was  like  the  uncertain  roll  of  a  water-logged 
and  deserted  dory. 

Yet,  for  several  days  after  that  first  glance  back- 
ward, he  always  turned  his  head  when  he  passed  the 
girl,  and  she  always  turned  hers.  This  is  a  dangerous 
thing  to  do,  as  the  Bible  informs  us,  and  if  it  has 
resulted  in  many  of  Lot's  daughters  changing  into 
something  less  useful  than  pillars  of  salt,  it  has  gone 
equally  hard  with  the  patriarch's  male  progeny. 

One  day,  when  Danny  looked  back,  he  smiled. 
The  girl  smiled,  too. 

"  Hello,"  said  Danny. 

"  Hello,"  said  the  girl. 

The  next  afternoon  Danny  shamefacedly  resolved 
to  stop  and  speak  'to  her ;  and,  though  he  did  not  ex- 
actly do  it  on  the  day  determined,  he  did  at  last  ac- 


56        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

complish  this.  The  day  was  a  Saturday,  the  time 
morning,  and  the  meeting  not  wholly  due  to 
chance. 

"  Where  you  goin'  ?  "  asked  Danny. 

"  Home/'  said  the  girl,  twisting  a  foot  on  the  pave- 
ment. 

"  I  know  where  you  live,"  said  Danny. 

"  So  do  I  know  where  you  live,"  said  the  girl. 

"  Betchew  don't." 

"  Betchew  I  do." 

"Whatchewbet?" 

"  I  dunno.  I  know  where  you  live,  jus'  the  same. 
My  mother  knows  your  mother.  You're  Danny 
Barnes." 

"  Oh,  well,"  said  the  boy,  "  girls  don't  know  much, 
anyhow.  I  don't  like  girls." 

"  Then,"  said  the  brown-eyed  girl,  "  you  better  go 
home." 

Danny  was  in  no  hurry. 

"  Girls  can't  fight,"  said  he.  He  wormed  the  toe 
of  his  boot  under  a  loose  brick.  "  I  kin,"  he  added. 
"  I  kin  lick  Snagsie  Fry." 

"Ugh!"  sniffed  the  girl. 

"  I  kin  so,"  said  Danny.  "  Least,  I  bet  I  kin.  I 
licked  Lester  Froenfield.  I  kin  lick  any  fellow  my 
own  size.  Girls  can't  do  that.  They  can't  do 
nothin'." 

"  I  kin  run,"  the  girl  protested,  shaking  her  brown 
pigtail. 

Danny  recalled  the  other  little  girl  that  he  had  once 
conquered  in  a  race,  and  how  unpleasant  she  had  made 
his  victory.  He  reflected,  however,  that  he  was  older 
now  and  made  of  sterner  stuff.  Also,  he  did  not  like 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        57 

the  high-headed  disdain  of  his  small  companion,  and 
he  sneakingly  wished  her  admiration. 

"  I  kin  give  you  a  start  to  that  there  tree  an*  beat 
you  to  the  corner,"  said  Danny. 

The  girl  consented  to  test  this  boast ;  and  there  were 
several  false  starts,  she  protesting  that  he  got  under 
way  before  she  reached  the  tree,  and  he  being  sure 
that  she  exceeded  the  agreed  handicap.  Yet  at  last 
the  race  was  begun  in  a  fashion  to  which  neither  con- 
testant conscientiously  could  object,  and  then — won- 
der of  wonders — the  girl  distanced  him  by  a  full  yard ! 

Sing,  goddess,  the  wrath  of  Danny,  son  of  Thomas ! 

"  I  stubbed  my  foot,"  he  panted;  and  he  told  the 
truth  as  he  saw  it.  "I  stubbed  my  foot,  or  you 
wouldn't  never  V  won,  you  bet." 

The  little  girl  laughed. 

"G'on!  "  she  said.  "  I  gotta  run  a  errand,  or  I'd 
run  it  all  over." 

"  Traid  cat!  "  taunted  Danny. 

44  I  ain't.    I'll  do  it  some  time." 

"  Yes,  you  will!" 

44 1  will  so." 

4'  When?  "asked  Danny. 

44  This  safter,"  said  the  girl,  by  which  she  meant 
that  afternoon. 

And  that  afternoon  Danny  had  his  revenge  and 
restored  masculinity  to  its  pedestal.  He  could  then 
afford  to  be  magnanimous. 

44  Say — I — I  like  you,"  he  stammered.  44  You're 
not — girly." 

After  that  they^often  played  together. 

The  girl  with  the  inquiring  eyes  was  named  Judith 
Kent. 


58        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

§  5.  For  a  long  time  Danny  did  not  communicate 
to  Snagsie  Fry,  son  of  the  Adams  Hotel  philosopher, 
his  difficulties  about  the  problem  of  the  rainspout. 
At  first  he  was  too  much  troubled  by  the  discrepancies 
between  what  his  mother  had  said  and  what  the  cook 
in  the  house  opposite  let  fall,  and  between  both  these 
theories  and  the  explanation  that  Mrs.  Fry  had 
adopted.  Then  he  realized,  from  his  mother's  un- 
mistakable manner,  that  the  subject  was,  for  some 
reason  that  nobody  could  define,  taboo;  and  finally 
there  were,  of  course,  long  periods  during  which  he 
would  forget  the  matter  altogether.  A  boy's  life  is 
an  extremely  busy  one,  and  he  has  not  always  time 
to  devote  to  wondering  how  it  began.  Yet  there  were 
other  periods  when  Danny  did  wonder  deeply,  not 
whether  his  mother  could  be  mistaken,  but  whether 
the  cook  did  not  err,  and,  with  tragic  despondency, 
whether  Snagsie  had  not  knowingly  lied. 

For  Snagsie,  being  several  months  his  senior,  was 
Danny's  hero.  In  the  first  place,  because  Snagsie  was 
older  he  must  know  more ;  in  the  second,  because  he 
was  the  son  of  a  disreputable  person,  he  bore  inno- 
cently and  safely  and  at  second  hand  some  of  the 
glamor  of  disrepute ;  and  lastly,  because  he  came  from 
a  careless  home,  he  could  do,  without  fear  of  repri- 
mand, much  that  other  lads  were  forbidden.  Snagsie 
was  unrebuked  when  he  not  only  failed  to  be  first 
but  managed  to  be  "  tail  "  in  his  class  at  school;  he 
could  go  swimming  without  asking  permission,  and 
could  u  swim  sailor  "  while  his  friends  still  struggled 
with  "  side  stroke  ";  he  was  allowed  to  stay  away 
from  school  when  he  felt  like  it — or,  at  any  rate,  he 
did  so — and  he  frequently  made  forays  into  that  sec- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        59 

tlon  of  Americus  called  Kitchentown  (because  there 
it  was  the  custom  for  a  man  to  build  his  kitchen  first 
and  the  rest  of  his  house  as  he  could  afford  it)  and 
here  play  marbles  u  for  keeps."  Snagsie's  parents 
were  not  cultivated  by  Danny's  parents;  but  Danny's 
parents,  after  some  debate,  had  charitably  decided 
that  Snagsie  was  not  responsible  for  the  scandal  of 
his  birth,  and  that,  being  unconscious  of  it  and  likely 
to  remain  so  since  marriage  had  rendered  it  at  least 
semi-respectable,  and  being  more  or  less  firmly  estab- 
lished as  Danny's  classmate,  he  would  probably  do  no 
harm  as  one  of  Danny's  companions  in  a  community 
and  at  a  stage  of  life  where  social  distinctions  and 
their  explanation  are  delicate  and  difficult. 

In  natural  accord  with  their  training,  if  at  this 
time  Danny  and  his  hero  thought  of  sex  at  all,  it  was 
as  of  something  with  which  life  has  only  an  acci- 
dental concern.  Certainly,  mention  of  sentimental 
affection  was  avoided.  The  little  boys  at  school,  emu- 
lating their  elders,  learned,  as  early  as  the  Second 
Grade,  to  jeer  at  sentiment.  There  were  moments, 
of  course,  when  Danny  wished  to  hint  that  the  world 
might  contain  a  certain  lady  in  whose  defense  against 
Indians  or  robbers  it  would  be  an  exquisite  pleasure 
for  a  certain  young  gentleman  to  die;  but  to  this 
weakness  he  never  quite  succumbed.  The  boys  never 
employed  the  verb  "  to  love  ";  they  knew  there  was 
such  a  word,  but  studiously  they  edged  around  it, 
ashamed  of  their  ignorance  and  afraid  of  the  ex- 
posure of  it. 

0 

§  6.  Yet  if  sex  did  not  obsess  Danny  more  than 
it  obsesses  other  boyish  intellects,  its  perpetual  riddle 


60        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

owned  for  him,  as  for  all  boys,  the  faculty  to  return 
and  to  annoy.  He  was  acquiring,  as  he  was  bound  to 
acquire,  curiosity;  and  curiosity  is  the  mightiest  pas- 
sion of  the  human  mind.  Americus,  for  instance,  had, 
of  course,  its  scarlet  woman,  a  rather  handsome  scar- 
let woman  by  the  name  of  Mildred  Maynard.  Danny 
did  not  understand  her;  but  he  wanted  to. 

"  Father,"  he  said  one  afternoon  as,  on  his  way 
to  school,  he  walked  a  block  along  Tom  Barnes's  route 
toward  the  store,  "  Judith  Kent's  Uncle  Billy  isn't 
married,  is  he?  " 

The  father  shook  his  chin  beard. 

"  Well,  is  he  goin'  to  marry  that  Mildred  May- 
nard?" 

Tom  Barnes's  hazel  eyes  narrowed. 

"Certainly  not!"  he  snapped  before  his  keener 
senses  could  warn  him  to  nip  the  bud  of  this  con- 
versation. 

"  They're  sweethearts,  anyhow,"  said  Danny.  "  I 
seen — saw  them  walkin'  way  out  Oak  Street  last  night 
when  us  boys  was  playin'  hare-an'-hounds." 

Tom's  upper  lip  drew  down  so  tightly  that  it  pulled 
his  rugged  nose  after  it. 

"  You  mustn't  never  talk  about  Mildred  May- 
nard," he  ordered.  "  She's  bad — a  bad  woman. 
People  don't  marry  bad  women.  Now,  don't  ask 
foolish  questions.  You're  not  old  enough  to  under- 
stand. Wait  till  you're  grown  up,  Danny.  Nice 
folks  don't  talk  about  her — no,  sir!  " 

"But  isn't  Judith's  Uncle  Billy  nice?"  asked 
Danny. 

" 1  tell  you,"  said  his  father,  "  that  you  mustn't 
ask  questions.  Now,  run  along  to  school."  .  < 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        61 

§  7.  Danny  loved  his  parents,  loved  thern  so  pas- 
sionately and  devotedly  that  he  was  resolved  to  see  no 
wrong  in  them;  surely  resolved  that  there  could  be 
no  wrong  to  see ;  yet  he  seemed  constantly  to  be  com- 
ing to  these  ways  of  their  own  travel  that  were  barred 
to  him.  "  Wait  "  was  never  a  word  that  explained; 
postponement  never  justified  anything.  Dimly,  his 
mind  was  grappling  with  the  angels  of  doubt. 

Danny  had  the  observing  eye  of  youth.  That 
spring  he  awakened  to  the  notice  of  the  many  per- 
sons that  wandered  through  the  scented  night,  far 
out  Oak  Street,  where  the  houses  were  fewer,  where 
the  wheat  fields  met  the  building-line,  and  town 
merged  with  country.  He  noticed  that  these  persons 
always  walked  in  pairs,  a  man  and  a  woman.  He 
noticed  that  they  walked  close  together,  bending  to- 
ward each  other,  and  that  when  he  boisterously  ran 
by  them,  they  were  silenced. 

At  first  he  noticed  these  things  without  curiosity. 
As  the  thought  of  inquiring  their  cause  came  to  him, 
he  suddenly  knew  that  if  he  asked  of  his  parents,  he 
would  not  be  answered.  .  .  . 

§  8.  About  this  time,  when  the  battle  between  the 
truth-telling  that  he  had  been  taught  and  the  lying 
that  seemed  inescapable  was  at  its  sharpest,  Danny 
played  truant  from  school  for  the  first  time  in  his  life 
and  smoked  his  first  cigarette.  He  does  not  remem- 
ber how  it  all  began.  Perhaps  the  rebel  power  that 
fills  the  seductive  air  of  spring  called  too  strongly 
for  him.  Perhaps  it  was  merely  Snagsie  Fry.  In 
any  case,  Dan  recalls  distinctly  the  nausea  following 
that  cigarette  of  dried  sunflower  leaves,  which  Snagsie 


62        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

had  saved  from  the  summer  previous,  and  will  never 
forget  the  horrid  sinking  of  his  heart  when,  at  sunset, 
he  turned  his  slow  steps  homeward. 

His  father  had  gone  to  Philadelphia  to  make  pur- 
chases for  the  distant  autumnal  "  Opening  " ;  but  his 
calm-browed  mother  was  there  to  receive  him,  and 
though  he  already  considered  his  recent  sickness  an 
adequate  punishment  for  his  narcotic  indulgence,  he 
felt  that  no  power  could  ever  cleanse  the  stain  of 
his  truantage. 

"  How  did  the  lessons  go?  "  inquired  his  mother 
in  the  hallway. 

Danny  had  not  counted  on  this ;  he  had  not  counted 
on  anything.  The  boy  is  like  the  primitive  savage 
that  in  August  never  takes  account  of  December. 
Danny  gasped,  "  Oh,  all  right,  mother  " — and  hur- 
ried by  her  up  the  grateful  darkness  of  the  stairs.  J 

He  went  to  his  own  room,  with  the  cross  of  his 
books  persistently  bumping  against  his  side,  and  flung 
his  miserable  body  upon  the  narrow  bed. 

He  had  lied !  To  the  soul  of  truth  and  its  ^acher, 
he  had  lied.  While  he  writhed  there  in  a  mental 
agony,  he  seemed  to  see  that  he  could  often  lie  now : 
he  that  had  been  trained  by  his  truthful  parents  to 
see  the  high  worth  of  truth !  A  liar !  Danny  Barnes ! 
And  how  easy  it  had  been !  It  had  been  easy  to  tell, 
and,  more,  his  mother,  whom  he  had  thought  omnis- 
cient, had  not  recognized  the  falsehood.  Sup- 
pose  . 

But  there  a  new  terror  obtruded  itself :  suppose  he 
should  be  found  out,  after  all ! 

The  fierce  bravery  that  is  born  of  utter  fear  pos- 
sessed him;  yet  it  was  not  this  alone  which  forced 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        63 

him  to  his  next  action.  It  was  something  finer  and, 
one  prefers  to  think,  something  more  inherent  in  the 
little  children  of  men.  He  simply  could  not  bear  the 
thought  of  lying  to  his  honest  mother.  All  through 
the  tasteless  supper,  where  the  original  deception 
seemed  to  breed  its  kind  with  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  dragon's  teeth  bred  soldiers  in  the  Greek  story, 
he  bore  it;  but  when  bedtime  came  and  his  mother 
bent  for  her  good-night  kiss,  he  could  bear  it  no 
longer. 

"  Mother,"  he  sobbed,  bowing  his  disordered  head 
upon  her  knees — "  mother,  I — I  told  a  story.  I 
wasn't  to  school  this  safter — an'  I  smoked!  " 

And  the  mother,  who  had  guessed  the  truth  half 
an  hour  before,  only  took  him  gently  into  her  arms 
and  said  that  she  would  not  tell  his  father  this  time— 
a  promise  that,  comforting  as  it  was,  even  then  struck 
'him  as  peculiar — and  cried  over  him  and  bade  him 
be  good  in  the  future,  and  lay  down  with  him  as  in 
the  old  days.  And  Danny  swore  never,  never. to  do 
such  a  thing  again. 

§  9.  He  was  constantly  overhearing  things:  a  few 
that  his  parents  did  not  wish  overheard  and  a  great 
many  that  they  did  not  imagine  it  would  matter 
whether  he  overheard  or  not.  Life  with  its  conven- 
tions they  accepted  now  as  matter  of  fact,  and  forgot 
that  they,  too,  may  once  have  questioned  each  new 
phase  of  it;  as  for  their  Danny,  it  did  not  occur  to 
them  that  daily  his  lack  of  age  and  experience  forced 
him  to  puzzle  £>ver  the  etiquette  of  living.  Once, 
when  he  was  playing  on  the  lawn  with  "  Flower,"  the 
spaniel  bitch,  and  his  father  and  mother  sat  oh  the 


64        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

porch,  he  heard  Tom  talking  to  Mrs.  Barnes  of  an 
incident  at  the  store. 

Tom  never  gave  his  wife  details  concerning  the 
essentials  of  his  business:  such  matters  were  beyond 
the  feminine  ken ;  but  he  had  a  fondness  that  he  rather 
regarded  as  a  weakness  for  furnishing  her  with  a  host 
of  non-essentials. 

"  A  man  always  knows  what  he  wants  and  is  willin' 
to  pay  for  it,1'  he  was  on  this  occasion  saying;  "  but 
that  ain't  the  way  with  a  woman.  No,  sir.  Take 
Mrs.  Kent.  She  come  in  to-day  an'  was  pawin'  over 
the  things  on  the  bargain-counter.  She  tired  the  clerk 
right  out,  an'  seein'  he  was  likely  to  miss  a  sale,  I 
come  up  to  wait  on  her  myself. 

"  '  Good-afternoon,'  I  says. 

"  '  Oh,  good-afternoon,  Mr.  Barnes,'  says  she. 

"  '  Was  there  anythin'  in  particular  you  might  be 
lookin'  for?  '  I  asks. 

"  Now,  I'd  noticed  her  eyein'  that  pile  o'  gilt-feet 
footstools,  so  I  picks  one  up  an'  tells  her  how  fine 
it  was  an'  what  a  bargain. 

"  *  A  bargain,'  says  I. 

"  '  What's  the  price,  Mr.  Barnes?  '  says  she. 

"  *  One-twenty-five,'  says  I. 

"  '  Dear  me,'  she  says,  *  I  couldn't  think  o'  payin* 
that.  I  didn't  really  need  one,  anyhow.' 

"  Now,  that's  where  it  comes  in :  good  business. 
I'd  seen  her  eyein'  the  stools  an'  so  I  knowed — knew 
— I  could  git  her  if  I  worked  it  right. 

"  '  Oh,  well,'  says  I,  '  seein'  it's  you,  Mrs.  Kent, 
we'll  call  it  square  at  one-fifteen.' 

"  '  Make  it  ninety  cents,'  says  she. 

"  I  kn-knew  she  wouldn't  bid  at  all  if  she  didn't 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        65 

want  it,  so  I  stuck  to  her  an'  made  her  see  she  did 
want  it,  an'  at  last  I  got  her  to  take  it  for  a  dollar. 
Yes,  sir :  a  dollar,  an'  the  lot  cost  me  twenty-five  cents 
apiece,  an'  I  was  only  chargin'  seventy-five  cents  be- 
fore I  put  'em  on  the  bargain-counter. 

"  Now,  mother,  a  poor  salesman'd  never  made  any 
sale  to  her  at  all,  because  he'd  never  'a'  made  her 
see  she  wanted  it,  an'  there,  just  by  usin'  a  little  sense, 
I  made  a  three-hundred-per-cent.  profit  and  pleased 
her  into  the  bargain." 

That  was  the  way  that  Tom  looked  at  it.  How  his 
wi^e  looked  at  it  nobody  ever  knew,  since  it  was  not 
her  custom  to  offer  comment  and  seldom  her  custom 
to  have  any  to  offer  in  business  matters ;  but  to  Danny 
there  came  a  new  phase  of  his  great  doubt. 

§  10.  So  sex  was  only  a  portion  of  Danny's  per- 
plexity. His  perplexity  embraced  the  entire  ques- 
tion of  honesty ;  but  just  then  sex  predominated,  and 
so  at  last  there  came  a  time  when  he  and  Snagsie 
began  to  talk  of  it. 

Snagsie  liked  his  role  of  hero.  He  had  always 
liked  it  and  now  he  had  grown  accustomed  to  it.  He 
had,  as  an  incident  thereunto  appertaining,  always 
known  everything  about  anything  concerning  which 
Danny  inquired;  and  now  it  really  appeared,  when 
the  son  of  Tom  Barnes  made  his  first  furtive  in- 
quiries, that  Snagsie  had  long  ago  deserted  the  rain- 
spout  school  of  anthropology  and  had  come  upon  a 
low  perversion  of  fact.  Youth  is  never  a  miser  with 
its  knowledge ;  a  boy  no  sooner  acquires  than  he  must 
give  forth  to  all  comers;  and  Snagsie  gave  forth  to 
Danny  Barnes. 


66        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

They  were  in  the  "  library  "  of  the  Barnes  house  at 
the  time,  and  the  conversation  had  been  suggested  by 
some  pictures  of  Hellenic  statuary  in  an  old  General 
History.  Snagsie  used  the  pictures  to  illustrate  his 
theory. 

This  was  the  beginning.  Afterwards,  when  nobody 
was  about,  Danny  would  open  the  book  and  look  at 
those  figures,  not  as  at  something  beautiful,  but  as 
at  something  attractive  only  because  of  what  they 
suggested  to  him.  Followed  the  whispered  story  that 
was  told  with  a  leer  and  received  with  a  giggle;  fol- 
lowed the  rainy  days  when  the  lads  played  in  the 
Froenfields'  barn  or  lay  in  couples  under  the  eaves  of 
the  chicken-house  in  the  Frys'  backyard ;  followed  the 
cowardly  lifting,  upon  a  half-seen  dark  corner,  of 
the  curtain  that  hid  from  them  the  meaning  of  life. 

§11.  Nowadays,  when  Dan  looks  upon  this 
period  of  his  boyhood,  he  thinks  the  patent  facts 
sufficiently  evil  in  themselves ;  but  there  are  those  who 
look  beyond  the  patent  facts  and  see  a  greater  evil. 
They  would  say  that  the  fault  lay  with  the  natural 
guardians,  who  should  have  warned  him  and  enlight- 
ened him.  They  would  say  that  those  guardians  had 
begun  by  teaching  him  to  regard  them  as  at  least 
demigods  and  had  ended  by  first  making  him  secretive 
and  by  then  warping  his  whole  moral  fiber  when  he 
discovered  that  his  teachers  of  honesty  and  truth  were 
themselves  neither  truthful  nor  honest.  They  would 
say  that,  bad  as  was  what  he  had  been  made  to  do, 
what  he  had  been  made  to  be  was  worse. 

There  was  no  shock,  because  the  thing  came  slowly, 
as  all  the  greatest  evils  come.  Nothing  snapped,  but 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        67 

something  was  worn.  There  was  only  erosion,  vitia- 
tion, decay.  Th«  quiet  lad  that  obeyed  his  father  by 
day  and  kissed  his  silent  mother  each  evening  when 
the  lessons  were  learned  was  one  individual;  when  his 
bedroom  door  closed  upon  him  he  was  another. 

And  so,  once  and  for  all,  we  must  bid  good-by  to 
the  little  curly-headed  boy  that  stood  in  the  moonlight 
and  asked  of  the  stars  the  answer  that  his  parents  did 
not  give  him.  For  neither  would  the  stars  answer. 


MRS.  BARNES'S  large  hands  paused  in  their 
sewing.  She  was  always  sewing.  Now  her 
usually  placid  face  was  puzzled. 

"  Why  didn't  you  get  over  to  the  Dorcas  yester- 
day? "  she  asked. 

She  was  addressing  her  husband's  sister  and  senior, 
Louisa  Barnes,  known  to  the  family  as  "  Aunt  Lou  " : 
a  thin,  diminutive,  gray-haired  spinster,  with  a  mouth 
like  her  brother's  and  a  mind  of  her  own. 

"  I  kin  stand  the  Dorcas  wunst  a  month,"  said 
Louisa.  "  Rest  o'  the  time  I've  jest  got  to  eat  my 
turkey  'thout  the  gravy  o'  gossip." 

Aunt  Lou  had  not  risen  with  the  other  members 
of  the  family,  and  was  proud  of  it.  She  displayed 
her  pride  partly  in  her  persistently  plain  clothes, 
partly  in  the  provision  of  a  continuous  sanctuary  to 
which  Danny  flew  whenever  trouble  brewed  for  him 
at  home,  and  especially  in  the  flaunting  flag  of  an  un- 
improved habit  of  speech. 

"  Why,  Aunt  Lou !  "  said  Mrs.  Barnes.  "  I  don't 
think  you  could  call  the  Dorcas  real  gossips." 

"  I  kin  call  'em  worse'n  that,"  retorted  Louisa. 
Then  the  faint  shadow  of  a  smile  played  over  her 
tight  lips.  "  But  I  sometimes  like  to  git  my  sin 
vicariously,"  she  added.  "  What  did  they  have  to 
lick  their  chops  over  yesterday?" 

Mrs.  Barnes  flushed. 

68  A 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        69 

"  Nothing,"  she  stammered:  "really  nothing  at 
all." 

"  That  must  'a'  been  tiresome,"  said  Louisa. 
"  Tell  me  the  nothin'." 

"  It  really  wasn't  much,"  murmured  Mrs.  Barnes, 
"  and  I  don't  quite  know  whether  I  want  to  bother 
to  repeat  it." 

"  You're  dyin'  to,"  said  Louisa. 

Mrs.  Barnes's  fingers  twined  and  intertwined. 

"  It  was  something,"  she  said,  "  about  Mrs.  Kel- 
ler's little  Abel.  Mrs.  Trauman  told  me." 

"  Well,"  remarked  Louisa  with  considerable  satis- 
faction, "  if  you  heard  it  at  the  Dorcas,  an'  it  was 
about  that  boy  o'  the  Kellers,  an'  Mrs  Trauman  tol' 
it,  then  it  must  be  pretty  bad.  Please  don't  keep 
me  waitin'  no  longer." 

Mrs.  Barnes  repeated  the  gossip  with  many  a 
twinge  of  pain. 

"  There  couldn't  be  any  mistake  about  it,"  she 
concluded.  "  Mrs.  Trauman  walked  right  into  them 
before  they  knew  it — Abel  Keller  and  Mrs.  Trau- 
man's  own  boy,  who's  three  years  younger  an'  as 
innocent  as  a  lamb." 

"  Hump!  "  said  Louisa.  "  I  s'pose  "she  give  her 
lamb  a  good  whalin'  an'  tol'  Mrs.  Keller  to  do  the 
same?  " 

Mrs.  Barnes  bowed  assent. 

"  Well,  then?  "  said  Louisa.  She  leaned  forward, 
her  sharp  eyes  peering  into  those  of  her  sister-in- 
law  until  her  sister-in-law's  fell.  "  Well,  then?  "  she 
repeated. 

"Nothing,"   faltered  Mrs.   Barnes. 

Louisa's  eyes  did  not  retreat. 


70        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Sarah,"  she  said,  "  you  don't  mean  to  sit 
there  an'  try  an'  tell  me  you  beqn  suspectin'  our 
Danny?" 

Mrs.  Barnes's  head  drooped. 

"  No,  no,  no!  "  she  sobbed.  "  I  couldn't  do  that, 
only — only ° 

"  Only  you  done  it!  " 

"  I  did  not.     Only  I  was  worried.     Mrs.  Trau- 

man's  Bertie's  a  good  boy,  too,  and  yet I  don't 

know.,  I  just  don't  know,  Lou.  It'd  be  so  awful; 
and  I 'was  wondering  if  maybe  Danny  couldn't  be 
shielded,  or  warned,  or 

'Warned?"  Louisa's  face  became  a  mask  of 
horror.  "  Do  you  want  to  put  ideas  into  his  head?  " 
she  demanded.  "  It's  your  an'  Tom's  business  to 
shield  him — yes — an'  you  do  shield  him.  So  do  I. 
diften  as  not  I  got  to  take  his  side  ag'in  you  two. 
But  warn  him !  Why,  Sallie,  you  take  the  wind 
right  out  o'  me.  Danny!  This  is  a  good  deal  o' 
foolishness — even  fer  you.  Other  boys  maybe  do 
such  things,  but  our  Danny — the  very  idea !  " 

"  I  know,"  sobbed  Mrs.  Barnes;  "  but  sometimes 
I  get  afraid  he  might  get  into  bad  company." 

"  Bad  company?    At  his  age?" 

"  Well,  there's  that  Fry  boy  and  such  peo- 
ple." 

Louisa's  face  grew  grave. 

"  I'm  sure,"  she  said,  "  I'm  right  down  ashamed 
o'  you,  forgettin'  your  Christian  charity  an'  blamin' 
the  Fry  boy  for  what  his  parents  done.  Lysander's 
a  smart  little  boy  an'  very  fond  o'  Danny." 

"  Of  course  you're  right,"  sobbed  Mrs.  Barnes. 
"I  know;  I  know!" 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        71 

"  Then  I  do  hope  you  ain't  said  nothin'  about 
this  to  Tom?  He  wouldn't  take  it  the  right  way. 
Men  oughtn't  to  be  told  about  such  things." 

"  I  haven't." 

"Ner  won't?" 

"  I  won't." 

"  Then  try  these  here  smellin'  salts,"  advised 
Aunt  Lou;  "  an'  let  me  make  you  a  cup  p'  tea." 

§  2.  So  the  chance  went  by,  and,  like  most  chances 
that  go  by,  did  not  return.  The  education  of  Tom 
Barnes's  son  continued  along  the  lines  that  Tom  had 
planned.  When  the  parents  wavered,  there  was  al- 
ways, until  her  death  a  few  years  later,  the  loyal 
Aunt  Lou  to  rebuke  their  weakness  and  to  counter- 
act, with  her  own  brand  of  kindness,  their  occa- 
sional lapses  toward  the  severities  of  any  other 
course. 

Yet  nothing  happened  of  a  sudden.  To  appeal 
again  to  the  sage  of  Americus,  if  ever  there  arises  a 
scribe  to  play  Plato  to  the  Socrates  of  Freddie  Fry, 
this  remark  will  find  a  place  of  prominence  among 
the  dicta  therein  set  down : 

*  There's  only  one  sure  sing  about  what's  goin' 
to  happen  to  a  man:  eversing's  goin'  to  happen,  but 
nussing  ever  happens  all  to  wunst." 

Even  so  was  it,  and  no  more,  with  Danny  Barnes, 
now  soon  significantly  to  grow  into  Dan. 

He  remembers  that  night  when  the  stars  failed 
him.  He  remembers  the  gradual  failing  of  those 
hereditary  guardians  who  had  seemed,  until  then,  as 
stable  as  the  stars.  But  he  recalls,  when  he  sets  his 
mind  to  recollection,  much  between  these  two  events 


72        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

and  more  that  was  contemporaneous  with  the  prog- 
ress of  the  second. 

He  remembers  particularly  his  long  tramps  among 
the  woods  of  summertime :  the  dusty  roads  fluttering 
with  white  and  yellow  butterflies,  the  mossy  lanes 
and  leaf-carpeted  by-paths,  the  pungent  odor  of  arch- 
ing pine-trees,  the  sudden  laughter  of  brown  creeks, 
and  the  conquest  of  some  unexpected  eminence  with 
its  view  of  curving  river  and  distant  town.  He  re- 
members all  that  countryside,  when  the  miles  were 
longer  than  they  now  are  and  the  hilltops  ever  so 
much  higher.  He  remembers  how,  along  with  his 
sexual  growth,  he  passed,  normally,  through  all  the 
other  ordained  life  of  every  other  normal  boy,  and 
he  knows  at  this  day  how  then  he  came  unconsciously 
to  love  that  life  and  the  scene  of  it. 

Once  his  father  took  him  to  Philadelphia,  and  that 
was  something  that  nobody  ever  could  forget.  Not 
the  Philadelphia  of  even  the  last  decade.  Not  the 
overgrown  village  with  its  smug  hypocrisy,  its  feudal 
despotism,  and  its  mind  as  muddy  as  its  streets  and 
as  narrow  as  its  government.  Not  that,  but  a  won- 
derful city  with  noisy  horse-cars  and  a  city  hall 
where  the  Declaration  of  Independence  had  been 
signed  and  whence  the  affairs  of  a  great  municipality 
were  still  administered;  where  Danny  saw  his  father 
in  familiar  converse  with  a  world-famous  merchant, 
and  where  the  boy  himself  was  given  a  chance  to 
shake  hands  with  a  real  politician,  who  had  grown 
rich  by  controlling  the  gas-works  of  the  town :  a 
place  of  crowds  and  struggle  and  achievement;  the 
home  of  the  Larger  Life;  a  symbol,  not  a  thing — 
in  a  word,  the  City  of  his  dreams. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        73 

That  glimpse  of  the  real  city  was  not  only  some- 
thing to  brag  about  to  the  other  boys  at  home,  even 
to  Snagsie  Fry;  it  was  something  to  think  of  when 
Danny  was  alone;  something  to  plan  to  see  again; 
something  to  become  an  important  part  of  his  de- 
veloping life-scheme.  Danny  decided  definitely  that 
he  must  some  day  know  the  City  well  and  that, 
from  what  he  would  learn  there,  he  could  draw  new 
strength  to  make  him  all  that  his  father  planned  he 
should  be  in  the  Barnes  store  in  Americus. 

And  yet  the  time  had  £ome  when  sex  was  be- 
setting. Danny  knew  that  it  was  hidden,  and  because 
it  was  hidden  it  tickled  his  curiosity.  Hidden — he  had 
been  implicitly  taught  that  the  things  to  be  concealed 
are  the  things  that  one  ought  to  be  ashamed  of,  like 
playing  truant  from  school  and  smoking  cigarettes 
before  you  are  "  grown  up."  His  parents  had  con- 
cealed from  him  the  phenomena  of  sex;  and  the 
child  concluded  that  the  phenomena  of  sex  must, 
therefore,  be  something  of  which  mankind  was  so 
rightly  ashamed  as  to  justify  a  lie  told  even  to  those 
one  loved.  For  his  father  and  mother  had  lied  to 
him — he  knew  that  now — and,  though  he  was  not 
aware  of  his  deduction,  he  no  less  certainly  deduced 
that  a  lie  was  of  no  harm  in  a  difficult  place. 

§3.  One  morning,  as  he  had  often  done  before, 
he  came  into  his  mother's  room  while  she  was  dress- 
ing. This  time  he  noticed  that  she  hastily  gathered 
a  bathrobe  about  her. 

"  Go  back,   Danny,"  said  Mrs.   Barnes. 

"Why?"  asked  Danny. 

"  Because  I  want  to  dress." 


74        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  But,  mother " 

"  Go  back,  dear." 

"  I  didn't  use  to  have  to  go  out  when  you  dressed." 

His  mother's  color  deepened.    She  looked  away. 

"  You  are  older  now,"  she  said.  Her  heart  ached 
for  him,  yet  that  was  all  that  she  could  say. 

And  Danny  did  not  press  for  a  further  explanation. 
He  had  found  that,  gradually,  secretly,  a  wall,  an  in- 
surmountable wall,  had  arisen  between  him  and  his 
parents.  It  was  a  wall  that  would  never  come 
down. 

He  went  into  his  own  room. 

§  4.  It  was  that  night  that  his  mother  entered  his 
bedroom  suddenly,  just  as  he  had  climbed  into  bed. 
She  had  long  since  ceased  seeing  him  safely  asleep, 
and  she  had  lately  begun  the  practice  of  knocking  at 
his  door  before  opening  it;  but  this  time  she  did  not 
knock. 

"You  have  the  light  out,"  she  said;  and  to 
Danny's  guilty  ears  her  voice  sounded  suspicious. 

He  pretended  to  be  asleep. 

"  Why  have  you  the  light  out?  "  she  persisted. 

"  Huh?  "  said  Danny  in  a  voice  that  he  meant  to 
be  thick  with  sleep.  "  Oh,  'cause." 

His  mother  came  over  to  his  bed  and  hugged  him. 
She  hugged  him  very  close. 

"What's  the  matter,  mother?"  he  asked. 
"Why'd  you  come  up?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  answered.  "  That  is,  I  came 
up  to  see — to  see  if  you  were  all  right,  Danny. 
Good — good-night,  my  boy — good-night." 

But  in  his  heart,   Dan  Barnes  felt  that  he  was 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        75 

being  spied  upon ;  and  the  lad  that  is  spied  upon  does 
not,  by  consequence,  develop  a  prejudice  for  frank- 
ness in  his  own  conduct.  Dan  saw  to  it  that  no 
espionage,  either  then  or  later,  availed. 

§  5.  Downstairs,  his  father  and  mother  were 
talking  of  him.  The  latter  had  told  the  former  that 
her  mission  to  the  second  floor  was  to  see  whether 
Dan  was  properly  covered. 

"  You  still  treat  that  boy  as  if  he  was  a  baby,"  said 
Tom.  His  tone  was  as  rasping  as  usual,  but  there 
was  a  tender  light  in  his  sharp,  hazel  eyes.  "  He 
wasn't  takin'  a  bit  of  cold,  now,  was  he?  " 

Mrs.  Barnes  sat  down  and  glanced  at  the  news- 
paper that  her  husband  had  just  discarded. 

"  I  think  he  was  all  right,  father,"  she  said. 

"  'Course  he  was,"  said  Tom.  "  He's  growin' 
so  fast,  he'll  be  a  partner  in  the  store  now  'most 
before  we  know  it.  Yes,  sir." 

"  I  suppose  he  will,"  sighed  Mrs.  Barnes. 

Her  husband  chuckled. 

"  That's  the  trouble  with  you  women,"  he  re- 
flected. "  If  you  had  your  way,  children  'd  never 
grow  up ;  they'd  just  always  stay  in  socks  an'  bibs." 

Mrs.  Barnes's  glance  was  busy  with  the  paper. 

"  He'll  soon  be  so  old,  he'll  be  thinking  about 
girls,  I  guess,"  she  said. 

"  Well,  that's  natural,"  said  Tom. 

"Will  you — will  you  tell  him  then,  father?" 

"Tell  him?"  Tom's  broad  forehead  wrinkled. 
"Tell  him  what?" 

Still  Mrs.  Barnes  did  not  look  up. 
\  "  Things,"  said  she. 


76        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"I_what  things  ?" 

"  You  always  said,  father,  that  you'd  tell  him." 

"  Oh,"  said  Tom.  His  upper  lip  tightened. 
"  That.  Yes.  I  see.  I  said  I'd  tell  him  what  he'd 
have  to  look  out  for  when  he  was  along  about  nine- 
teen if  they  was — if  there  was  any  need.  But,  growin' 
as  fast  as  he  is,  he's  a  long  ways  from  nineteen  yet — 
yes,  sir! — an'  how  d'  we  know  he'll  need  a  warnin' 
when  he  gets  there?  Besides,  I  always  said  nature'd 
most  likely  take  care  o'  all  that.  They  just  naturally 
learn." 

"  I  was  reading  in  the  paper  the  other  day," 
said  Mrs.  Barnes,  looking  at  the  sheet  that  she  now 
held  in  her  hands  as  if  she  might  discover  the  para- 
graph there,  "  a  piece  where  it  said  that  some  west- 
ern professor  was  talking  about  a  school  to  teach 

about  marriage.    I  wonder  if  he  meant Only  of 

course  he  didn't." 

The  Barneses  were  respectable  people,  which 
is||Q  say  that  they  were  so  respectable  that  nobody 
was  respectable  that  did  not  agree  with  them. 

"It's  downright  indecent,"  said  Barnes:  "that 
sort  o'  thing  is.  I  guess  that  if  we  needed  such 
things  we'd  have  had  'em  long  ago." 

'  Yes,"  agreed  his  wife,  "  it  does  seem  as  if  the 
world  had  got  along  without  them  all  right,  so 
far." 

"  Our  boy,"  explained  Tom,  "is  bein'  brought 
up  in  a  Christian  home.  He  has  the  best  influences. 
He  has  our  care  all  the  time,  an'  he'll  have  it  even 
when  he  goes  to  college.  What  does  he  need  of  such 
crazy  notions?  I'm  bringin'  him  up  to  be  a  good 
man  an'  a  good  merchant,  an'  I  guess  I  know  some- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        77 

thin*  about  how  to  bring  up  my  own  son  to  run  my 
own  store.'5 

They  were  silent  for  a  minute. 

"  Do  you  notice,"  asked  Mrs.  Barnes,  presently, 
"  that  he  seems  sort  of  taken  with  little  Judith 
Kent?" 

Again  Tom  chuckled.  He  forgot  that  he  had 
shown  a  disposition  to  consider  such  matters  long  be- 
fore his  wife  had  revealed  a  consideration  of 
them. 

"  You  women  do  beat  all!  "  he  said.  "  You  be- 
gin makin'  matches  for  'em  while  they're  in  their 
cradles.  Old  man  Kent's  daughter!  Well,  he  might 
do  worse,  mother;  he  might  do  a  sight  worse.  He 
must  marry  some  time;  he  must  marry  a  girl  that's 
good,  an'  it's  just  as  well  her  people  should  have 
means.  It's  better  they  should." 

§  6.  What  the  father  had  not  seen,  the  mother 
had  correctly  discerned.  There  were  many  Dans,  all 
separate.  There  was  the  Dan  that  his  parents  were 
accustomed  to,  the  Dan  of  the  school,  the  Dan  of  his 
playmates,  the  Dan  that  peeped  and  peered  and  pried 
into  the  secrets  of  life;  but  there  was  also  a  Dan  that 
began  now  to  develop  the  sentimental  side  of  experi- 
ence. The  thing  persistently  forced  itself  upon  the 
almost  all-important  business  of  being  what  is  con- 
sidered a  boys'  boy;  and  Dan  would  again  and  again, 
and  with  increasing  frequency,  sneak  away  from  his 
companions,  just  as  for  sentimental  reasons  his  com- 
panions would  sneak  away  from  one  another,  to  meet 
(oh,  by  the  merest  accidents!)  Judith  Kent. 

He  can  recall  her  now  as  she  once,  during  that 


78        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

time,  sat  beside  him  on  the  lowest  rail  of  a  meadow- 
fence.  He  can  still  see  the  long  brown  pigtail,  the 
tanned  face,  the  dark,  questioning  eyes.  .  .  . 

"  I  got  some  peanuts,"  said  Dan. 

"  Have  you?  "  asked  Judith. 

"Ugh-huh.    Want  some  ?" 

*  Yes.  Here,  I'll  show  you  sompin',  Dan.  You 
take  one  o'  these  nuts,  an'  I  take  one.  Then  we 
cross  arms.  This  way.  Then  we  each  eat,  and  then 
the  one  that  says  *  Yes  '  first  has  to — has  to " 

She  stopped. 

"Has  to  what?"  Dan  inquired. 

"  Oh,  I  dunno.  Has  to  give  the  other  a  present 
or  somepin'.  It's  a  game.  Will  you  do  it?" 

"  No,"  said  Dan. 

"  I  think  you're  mean,"  retorted  the  girl. 

"Why?" 

"  'Cause  you  know  I'll  catch  you.  I'm  smarter'n 
you  are." 

"  You  are,  like  fun." 

"  I  am,  too." 

"You  ain't." 

"  Then  try  it,"  challenged  Judith,  tossing  her 
brown  head. 

Dan  tore  a  bit  of  bark  from  the  fence-rail. 

"What  sort  of  a  present?"  he  asked. 

"Anythin'  you  like." 

"  Make  it  a — "  Dan  regarded  the  fence-rail. 
"Make  it  a  kiss?" 

"Silly!  "said  Judith. 

'Who's  afraid  o'  bein'  caught  now?"  taunted 
Dan. 

"  I  am  not!  " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        79 

"  You  are  so.    If  you  wasn't,  you'd  try  it." 

Judith  reflected. 

"Against  what?"  she  haggled. 

"  Five  cents,"  said  Dan. 

"  Five  cents !  "  Judith's  big  eyes  blazed  re- 
sentment. *  You  must  think  I  am  cheap !  " 

"  T's  all  I  got." 

"  Stingy!" 

"  I  got  a  couple  o'  more  pennies.  I'll  say  eight 
cents." 

"Got  a  dime?"  asked  Judith. 

"  Maybe." 

"  Fer  a  dime,  then,"  said  the  girl. 

They  ate  the  peanuts.  It  was  pleasant  to  curve 
his  arm  about  hers  and  to  know  that  her  bronzed 
face  was  close  to  his  freckled  cheek. 

"Are  you  goin'  to  win?"  he  next  instant  asked. 

Judith,  however,  was  not  so  easily  to  be  trapped 
into  uttering  the  losing  affirmative. 

1  You  don't  catch  me  that  way !  "  she  said. 

Dan  laughed.  He  reached  out  and  timidly  touched 
her  little  sunburnt  hand;  there  were  warts  on  his 
own. 

She  looked  at  him. 

"Do — do  you  like  me,  Dan?"  she  asked;  and 
Dan,  who  has  since  then  lived  a  busy  life,  crowded 
with  things  so  much  more  important,  can  to  this 
day  remember  the  queer  little  break  in  her  voice  as 
the  child  put  that  question  all  those  years  and  years 
ago. 

But  just  thpn  he  was  looking  for  lures.  He  did 
not  want  to  lose  that  ten-cent  piece,  and  he  almost 
as  much  wanted  to  win  the  kiss. 


8o        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  No  you  don't!  "  he  grinned. 

And  the  oddest  part  about  it  all  is  that  he  can- 
not now  for  the  life  of  him  recall  who  did  win  that 
contest.  He  is  sure  only  that,  whoever  won  it,  he 
did  not  then  kiss  Judith  Kent. 

§  7.  He  began,  also,  to  be  very  religious  and  so 
continued  until  he  had  entered  college.  Later,  at 
college,  much  of  his  faith  fell  away  from  him;  not 
suddenly,  but  bit  by  unnoted  bit,  the  slow  mists  that 
arose  from  practice  gradually  obscuring  the  clear 
vision  of  theory;  yet  in  those  earlier  days  he  accepted 
Scripture  and  doctrine  with  the  sweeping  material- 
ism of  boyhood.  At  his  parents'  desire  and  his 
own  he  became  a  member  of  the  church.  He  did  not 
merely  believe;  he  accepted  as  fact.  Skepticism  never 
so  much  as  occurred  to  him  as  a  possibility.  As  it 
lay  over  the  monks  of  Jocelin  of  Brakelond's  St. 
Edmundsbury,  so  religion  lay  over  him  "  like  an  all- 
embracing  heavenly  canopy,  like  an  atmosphere  and 
life-element."  He  was  sure  that  God's  eye  saw  all 
that  he  did;  that  if  Dan  did  well  he  would  some 
day  go  to  heaven  and,  winged,  play  a  golden  harp 
before  a  crystal  sea,  and  that  if  he  did  ill,  he  would 
end  in  a  burning  lake  of  everlasting  fire. 

Yet  he  did  ill.  There  were  hours  of  desperate 
repentance;  long  night-hours  of  reaction  when  his 
bare  knees  pressed  the  carpet  by  his  bed  and  his 
hands  were  clenched  in  prayer,  and  the  sweat  streamed 
into  his  upturned  eyes.  There  were  moments  of 
splendid  exaltation  when  he  was  sure  of  forgive- 
ness and  redemption,  when  he  walked  upright  and 
happy,  reconciled  to  God.  And  then  there  were 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        81 

times  when  all  these  things  passed  away:  were  tossed 
away  as  a  swollen  stream  bursts  its  dams  and  over- 
flows its  quiet  banks.  And  so  Dan's  life,  like  all 
our  lives,  was  the  battle-ground  of  Duality. 

Strangely,  however,  though  in  reality  simply  be- 
cause of  this  duality,  he  kept  his  visions  clear.  His 
visions,  still  unexpressed,  were  two:  he  wanted  to  go 
to  the  City;  to  be  at  the  heart  of  things;  to  do  his 
work  there  and  learn  his  lesson ;  to  look,  to  fail,  to  dis- 
cover, to  succeed;  to  face  the  mighty  forces  of  the 
world  and  to  bend  them  to  his  will ;  to  be  rich.  This 
and  another.  From  somewhere  in  his  being,  sprung 
from  some  seed  perhaps  sown  many  a  generation 
before,  there  was  already  coming  to  full  flower  in 
his  heart  the  tree  of  love.  At  any  moment,  a  little 
frost  might  blight  it,  but  the  ruin  was  not  yet.  His 
secrecies  did  not  touch  this  secret;  the  actions  that 
he  considered  foul  even  while  he  committed  them, 
did  not  soil  it — served,  if  they  affected  it  at  all,  then 
and  for  that  time,  to  make  it  but  the  purer  and  more 
delectable.  It  was  something  so  fine  and  unreal  that 
Judith  herself  was  but  the  token  of  it:  it  was  perfec- 
tion, completion ;  it  stood  above  the  dust  and  noise  of 
life  in  the  pure  air  and  clean  silence,  born  of  sex, 
yet,  from  his  wrong  view  of  sex,  beyond  it.  Twin 
ideals,  these,  that  he  was  to  seek  by  many  a  devious 
way. 

The  great  forces  express  themselves  through  small 
media  as  often  as  through  large,  and  Dan's  worked 
forward  and  fell  backward  in  the  familiar  manner. 
Through  the  years  that  followed,  he  went  to  the  local 
public  school  that  stood  still,  because  to  teach  new 
things  in  the  schools  was  to  make  the  sons  superior 


82        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

to  their  fathers,  and  that  was  unpatriotic.  He  was 
taught  by  masters  who  worked  on  the  hard  assump- 
tion that  boys  will  be  boys,  and  who  never  guessed 
that  all  boys  want  to  be  men.  He  was  taught 
mathematics,  which  he  always  liked  and  took  to 
easily,  from  its  beginnings  through  solid  geometry; 
physics;  a  little  Latin  and  some  bad  German;  the 
geography  of  maps  and  the  history  not  of  Man,  but 
of  men.  Of  politics,  of  industry,  of  finance,  and,  most 
important  of  all,  of  how  these  three  things  are  one, 
he  was  taught  nothing.  And  at  last  they  gave  him, 
to  study,  a  little  book  that  they  called  a  "  physiol- 
ogy"; and  Dan  and  his  companions,  being  aware 
that  the  "  physiology  "  lied  by  the  suppressio  veri, 
so  came  to  doubt  not  only  the  little  that  this  volume 
did  say,  but  all  their  other  text-books,  too,  and  all 
the  teachers  that  taught  them. 

Yet,  though  time  passed,  Judith,  or  what  she  rep- 
resented, remained  something  aloof,  something  to 
thank  God  for.  His  reverence  for  her,  his  idealiza- 
tion of  her,  were  the  direct  and  natural  reaction  from 
the  habits  to  which  that  reverence  and  idealization 
were  seemingly  opposed.  Then  and  always,  desires 
that  he  considered  extremely  base,  created  by  being 
extremely  base,  longings  that  he  considered  ex- 
tremely noble.  Into  Dan's  relations  with  Judith  no 
consciousness  of  sex  entered.  It  was  the  amusing, 
often  pathetic,  attachment  of  youth  to  youth.  Those 
other  things  were  of  the  hot  day  or  the  secret  night; 
but  Judith  was  twilight  to  him;  twilight  and  dawn; 
romance,  music,  tenderness.  And  he  needed  all  of 
these. 

"  Who  was  that  I  saw  you  with  on  Oak  Street 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        83 

yesterday?"  laughed  his  father,  knowing  well  the 
answer. 

"  Judith  Kent,  I  guess,"  said  the  blushing  Dan, 
who  found  that  he  was  blushing  much  and  uncon- 
trollably of  late. 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  old  Tom,  "  the  Kents  are  some 
of  the  best  people  in  the  town.  Yes,  sir!  There's 
no  harm  in  takin'  a  walk  with  their  Judith,  that's 
certain.  She's  a  nice  girl  an'  a  good  one." 

And  Mrs.  Barnes,  though  she  did  not  say  so, 
agreed. 

§  8.  Clothes,  as  the  years  went  by,  began  to  oc- 
cupy a  theretofore  unprecedented  portion  of  Dan's 
mind.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  grew  painfully 
aware  that  he  had  hands,  and  that  coat-sleeves  so 
short  as  to  display  his  prominent  red  wristbones  were 
a  horror.  He  developed  a  dread  of  every  step  in  his 
always-creaking  shoes.  He  plastered  his  hair  close 
to  his  round  skull,  and  he  spent  twenty-five  cents  from 
his  penny-bank  upon  a  red-and-yellow  necktie  that, 
having  acquired,  he  was  too  fearful  of  his  com- 
panions' comments  to  wear. 

If  Judith  noticed  these  things,  she  did  not  betray 
her  observation.  When  his  voice  had  begun  to  break 
and  to  assume  a  personality  of  its  own  and  fly  off 
at  all  sorts  of  unguessed  tangents  in  all  sorts  of  unin- 
tended keys,  she  did  not  remark  the  agony  that  it 
caused  him;  and  now,  with  their  little  jealousies  and 
great  tendernesses,  the  jealousies  outspoken  and  the 
tendernesses  never  expressed,  they  had  more  to  put 
their  thoughts  upon  than  abberations  sartorial  or 
physical. 


84        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Once  only  did  sex  invade  this  first  relation.  The 
boy  was  fond  of  country  walks ;  the  girl  was  blessed 
with  that  free  stride  which  can  be  acquired  by  none 
that  has  not  known  long  the  joys  of  going  bare- 
foot; and  so  they  passed  together  many  a  free  after- 
noon, tramping  the  trunpikes  or  climbing  the  river- 
hills.  On  one  of  these  walks  they  were  passing  a 
field  where  cows  were  grazing  and  into  which  a  bull 
had  found  its  way.  Judith  turned  her  head  quickly 
and  tried  to  divert  Dan's  attention;  but  the  boy 
saw  the  color  rush  to  her  cheek  and  felt  as  if  some- 
how something  fine  in  their  relationship  had  been 
dulled  and  coarsened. 

§  9.  Even  a  boy  and  girl  cannot,  however,  hold 
affection  forever  in  leash,  and  there  came  a  time 
at  last  when  that  of  Dan  and  Judith  tugged  almost 
too  fiercely  at  the  thong. 

It  was  an  evening  in  the  late  spring.  School 
had  but  recently  closed  upon  Dan's  proud  gradua- 
tion, and  he  and  Judith  had  rowed  out  on  the  Susque- 
hanna  and  landed  on  one  of  the  shady  islands  that, 
even  for  some  years  thereafter,  survived  the  annual 
grinding  of  the  winter's  ice.  Far  up  stream,  near 
the  tall  precipice  on  the  Doncaster  County  side,  one 
of  the  furnaces — there  were  then  still  furnaces  about 
Americus — had  been  "  blasting,"  and  the  cinder-car 
had  dumped  its  burden  of  liquid  fire  down  the  long 
hill  of  "  waste  "  into  the  hissing  river.  In  the  west 
the  sky  was  faintly  pink,  but  eastward  the  moon  had 
risen  and  was  turning  the  black  water  to  dancing 
silver.  The  breeze  was  tool,  the  waves  washed 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        85 

lazily  against  the  off-shore  rocks,  and  Dan  and  Judith 
were  alone. 

"  I  wish — I  wish  it  was  always  like  this/'  said 
Dan. 

His  voice  was  harsh,  and  his  words  inherently 
meaningless;  but  she  understood  him. 

"  It  would  be  nice,"  she  answered. 

They  walked  to  the  water's  edge  at  the  eastern 
end  of  the  island  and  looked  at  the  moonlight  on  the 
waves. 

44  It's  kind  of  like — like  heaven,"  gasped  the  boy. 
"  Don't  you  think  this  is  kind  of  like — heaven, 
Judith?" 

She  raised  her  eyes  to  him.  The  moonlight  touched 
her  face. 

"  I  think  that  this  could  be  heaven,"  she  said; 
and  it  was  a  long  time  thereafter  before  Dan  could 
see  moonlight  upon  water  without  hearing  her  voice. 

They  stood  silent.  He  wanted  to  break  the  silence ; 
perhaps  she  wanted  it  to  be  broken;  but  the  pause 
escaped  him,  got  beyond  him,  grew,  while  he  hesi- 
tated, to  dominant  proportions. 

"  I  guess  we  better  be  getting  home,"  said  Judith. 
"  My  folks'll  be  wondering  where  I  am." 

So  they  climbed  into  the  boat  again,  and  Dan 
rowed  her  back  to  shore.  He  saw  her  to  the  door  of 
her  house,  and  all  the  way  there,  though  they  talked 
much,  they  did  not  talk  of  the  subject  that  was  upper- 
most in  their  minds. 

» 

§  10.  After  that  he  felt  strangely  ashamed  to 
see  her,  and  the  longer  he  remained  away  from  her 


86        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  harder  it  became  to  seek  her  out  A  week  fol- 
lowed; two  weeks;  a  month;  and  then,  one  moonless 
evening,  he  passed  her  in  Oak  Street  talking  with  a 
lad  that  looked  like  Snagsie  Fry. 

Dan  never  mentioned  the  matter  to  Snagsie,  but 
the  next  time  that  he  passed  Judith  he  passed  her  with 
eyes  averted  and  head  in  air.  He  didn't  care,  he  said, 
anyhow.  His  father  had  just  announced  that  the 
faculty  of  Madison-and-Adams  College  at  Doncaster 
had  decided  to  admit  to  the  college,  without  examina- 
tion, candidates  bearing  a  proper  certificate  from  the 
high-schools  of  the  county;  that  Dan's  teacher  had 
provided  the  proper  certificate  for  Dan,  and  that 
Dan  was,  within  a  few  weeks,  to  begin  his  course  as 
a  real  student  in  a  real  college.  To  be  sure,  the 
boy  was  to  come  home  every  night,  but  that  as  yet 
mattered  little  to  Dan.  What  was  a  mere  public- 
school  girl  to  him  ?  She  would  soon  be  sorry  enough : 
for  was  not  he  about  to  breathe  the  ratified  atmos- 
phere of  the  Larger  Life? 


VI 


SO,  now  that  kissing-games  had  passed — though 
the  reason  for  their  passing  nobody  whispered 
— and  the  pimples  that  once  burned  Dan's  chin 
and  seared  Dan's  soul  had  faded  into  the  same  limbo; 
now  that  even  the  glory  of  the  first  shave  was  well- 
nigh  forgotten,  Dan  was  to  be  sent  to  college. 

"  Ag'in  my  will  an'  warnin',"  said  his  Aunt  Lou; 
"  I  tell  you  that,  Thomas:  ag'in  my  will  an'  warnin'. 
College  is  a  place  where  boys  fergit  what  their  parents 
learnt  'em  an'  learn  what  they  don't  need.  Just  you 
remember  that-there." 

Tom's  hazel  eyes  regarded  her  grim  face  with  a 
not  unkindly  twinkle. 

"  I  pay  the  bills  with  my  own  money,"  he  mildly 
reminded  her. 

"  Then,"  she  retorted,  "  you  jest  look  out  he  don't 
pay  'em  with  his  own  soul." 

"  I  will,"  said  Tom.  "  Yes,  sir!  That's  why  I'm 
havin'  him  home  nights  instead  of  boardin'  him  in 
one  of  those  dormitories.  You  leave  it  to  me,  Lou. 
You  don't  know  all  about  bringin'  up  a  child,  even 
if  you  did  never  have  one  of  your  own." 

And  Dan  really  began  to  learn  a  good  deal.  iHe 
acquired  some  of  that  prescribed  and  useless  knowl- 
edge which  is  the  dust  of  the  brain}  but  he  acquired 
much  besides.  Trie  played  a  little  football  and  ob- 
served thus  the  workings  of  the  mysterious  law  that 

87 


88        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

makes  the  otherwise  inferior  mind  superior  in  games 
and  sports  and  allies  most  physical  courage  to  moral 
cowardice.  He  traveled  through  black  caffons  of 
religious  doubt  and  emerged  upon  the  broad  valley 
where  tacit  acceptance  passes  for  faith,  and  where 
faith  does  not  interfere  with  conduct.  He  completed 
a  theory  of  practical  ethics  based,  though  he  did 
not  know  it,  upon  the  great  commandment:  "Thou 
shalt  not  be  found  out."  He  was  initiated  into  a 
fraternity — he-  called  it  a  "  frat  " — and  scorned 
factory-tied  neckties;  got  drunk  once;  discovered, 
though  he  continued  to  honor  and  fear  them,  that  his 
parents  were  old-fashioned,  and  was  justifiably  proud 
because,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  he  had  solved  all  the 
riddles  of  the  universe.  It  was  in  itself  a  happy, 
harmless,  ignorant  period,  and,  if  he  hated  having  to 
come  home  every  night,  Dan  made  up  for  this  by 
appearing  on  the  startled  streets  of  Americus  for  his 
Christmas  holidays  as  a  rollicking  young  blade  sup- 
ported by  yellow  shoes,  with  arabesque  designs  and 
far-extended  soles,  and  supporting  a  hat  that  veritably 
shouted  its  acquaintance  with  the  Seven  Deadly 
Sins. 

He  had  not  much  time  to  think  about  Judith. 
Both  boys  and  girls,  he  had  long  ago  noticed,  wore 
curls  and  dresses  for  a  certain  number  of  years;  then 
the  little  boys  were  tearfully  taken  to  a  barber's 
and  tearfully  put  into  trousers;  but  the  little  girls 
never  changed.  Now  he  was  quite  certain  that  a 
woman  was  merely  a  baby  girl  grown  physically  larger 
and  more  attractive,  whereas  a  man — well,  a  man 
progressed.  Therein  lay  the  difference:  a  woman 
could  never  go  ahead.  Besides,  Judith  seemed  so 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        89 

much  more  his  junior  than  she  used  to  be;  she  was  still 
a  schoolgirl,  and  he  seldom  saw  much  of  her;  and 
with  loVe  absence  is  like  liquor:  a  little  stimulates, 
but  a  long  course  kills.  Dan  began  to  be  thoroughly 
ashamed  of  his  early  affection. 

Finally,  at  about  the  close  of  his  Freshman  year, 
whatever  difficulty  the  affair  might  have  contained 
was  settled  for  Dan  by  the  swift  sword  of  finance. 
At  just  this  time,  when  the  god  of  Social  Distinctions 
was  taking  his  place  in  the  boy's  life,  the  Kents  lost 
their  little  fortune  and  became,  quite  naturally,  an 
impossibility.  It  was  the  opinion  of  Americus  in 
general  that  if  you  were  not  well-to-do  it  was  some- 
how your  own  fault,  the  half-expression  of  some 
otherwise  hidden  vice,  and  that,  if  you  had  once  had 
money  and  lost  it,  you  were  rather  worse  than  if  you 
had  all  your  life  been  poor.  The  Kents  suffered 
accordingly. 

"  I'm  mighty  sorry  about  it,  mother,"  remarked 
Tom  Barnes,  when  he  had  conveyed  to  his  wife  and 
child  the  news  of  the  Kents'  catastrophe — "  mighty; 
an'  I  wouldn't  think  of  bein'  unkind  to  'em;  but  if 
there  was  ever  anythin'  in  that  early  match-makin' 
idea  of  yours,  why,  it's  jest  as  well  that  Dan 
here  long  ago  got  over  his  bein'  sweet  on  their 
Judith." 

Dan  heatedly  denied  the  implication  that  he  had 
ever  been  "  sweet,"  but  he  thought  about  it  more  than 
once  in  the  fortnight  that  followed,  and  he  was  a  little 
relieved  when  he  heard  that  Mr.  Kent  had  "  accepted 
a  position  "  (",And  that  means  hooked  a  job,"  said 
Dan)  in  Philadelphia  and  was  at  once  to  remove 
there  with  his  family. 


90        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

§  2.  Summer  came — the  summer  of  the  typhoid- 
fever  epidemic  and  the  death  of  Aunt  Lou,  who 
would  not  believe  in  germs  and  refused  to  boil  the 
water  that  she  intended  for  drinking,  for  the  excel- 
lent reason  that  her  mother  had  never  done  such  a 
thing  and  had  been  killed  by  a  railroad-train — and 
Tom  Barnes  (they  were  now  beginning  to  call  him 
"Old  Tom"  and  even  "Rich  Tom"  Barnes)  an- 
nounced his  intention  of  -extending  Dan's  education 
by  giving  the  son,  during  vacation-time,  a  small  place 
and  a  nominal  salary  in  the  store. 

"  I  want  you  to  learn  early,"  said  the  father,  as  he 
unfolded  his  plan,  "  for  I  don't  count  on  your  always 
stopping  at  the  point  I'll  have  to  stop  at.  No,  sir! 
I  guess  you'll  get  there  quick  and*  go  ahead  a  long 
ways." 

They  were  seated  in  Old  Tom's  narrow  office  at 
the  back  of  the  big  new  store-building  on  Elm  Ave- 
nue, the  main  business  thoroughfare  of  Americus, 
which  Americus  always  called  "  Elam."  Only  a  high 
partition  shut  the  rest  of  the  emporium  from  their 
sight,  because  Old  Tom  liked  to  be  poised  at  a  place 
from  which  he  could  dart  forth  to  the  destruction 
of  suspected  clerks  and  the  detention  of  such  towns- 
people as  came  to  buy,  but  were  about  to  depart  with- 
out making  a  purchase.  The  opening  and  closing 
of  the  front  door,  the  constant  shuffle  of  feet,  the 
clatter  of  the  u  cash-balls  "  carrying  money  to  and 
from  the  cashier's  desk  along  the  overhead  wires, 
all  the  hum  of  a  busy  shop,  came  to  the  father's  ears 
like  so  much  music;  and  the  father  sat  there,  amid 
garish  calendars  issued  by  wholesale  houses  and  be- 
fore a  roll-top  desk  covered  with  letters,  bills,  and 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        91 

invoices  neatly  arranged:  the  tall,  rawboned  maker 
and  monarch  of  it  all. 

"  I  guess  I'll  do  the  best  I  can,"  said  Dan,  with 
the  shrug  of  his  right  shoulder  that  had  lately  be- 
come characteristic  of  him  and  that  clung  to  him  his 
whole  life  long. 

He  was  still  dressed  in  the  absurdities  of  the 
Freshman,  which  his  parents  silently  tolerated;  still 
ungainly  and  unformed;  but  there  was  fire  in  his  blue 
eyes,  and  the  old  dreams,  though  they  had  developed, 
had  never  entirely  left  him.  Trade  and  the  fight  for 
it  in  the  City,  even  love  as  something  raised  above 
his  own  warped  ideas  of  sex:  these  were  still  the 
hidden  springs  of  action  in  his  heart. 

Barnes  stretched  his  long  legs. 

"  You  bet  you  will,  Dan,"  he  declared.  "  The 
time's  comin'  when  there's  a  big  thing  to  be  done  in 
this  business  by  a  man  with  brains,  an'  if  you're  on 
the  spot  an'  understand  the  trade,  you  ought  to  be  the 
man.  Beginnin'  right  here  in  this  town,  you've  got 
the  chance  to  be  one  of  the  men  who  are  makin' 
America  a  great  nation,  who  are  givin'  employment 
an'  a  livin'  to  thousands  an'  thousands  an'  are  carryin' 
the  American  flag  an'  American-made  goods  into 
every  port  of  the  world." 

He  went  on,  gestureless,  but  speaking  rapidly,  for 
Tom  Barnes  also  had  his  dream.  And  his  dream 
was  not  small. 

He  saw,  in  a  word,  the  advance  of  combination 
into  the  already  devastated  field  of  competition.  He 
saw  the  coming  of  the  chain-of-stores  in  many  towns 
to  oust  the  independent  stores  that  preceded  it.  He 
believed  that  this  chain  .would  be  developed  into  a 


92        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

sort  of  retail  "  drygoods  "  trust  controlling  the  re- 
tail "  drygoods  "  business  of  the  United  States  and 
perhaps  extending  at  last  over  seas.  That  these 
things  would  not  come  in  his  day  he  was  well  aware ; 
but  he  was  sure  that  Dan  would  see  them,  and  he 
hoped  that  his  son  would  be  one  of  those  to  suggest 
and  make  and  keep  the  tremendous  combination. 

Nevertheless,  he  spoke  at  no  great  length  of  these 
changes:  he  had,  in  common  with  most  Americans 
and  Britons,  a  shame  of  anything  that  was  either  emo- 
tional or  remote,  and  so  he  turned  soon  to  the  prac- 
tical and  immediate  and  began  to  speak,  with  a  heavy 
pride  wrapped  in  a  rough  eloquence,  of  his  present 
shop  and  the  methods  whereby  it  had  been  established 
and  was  now  conducted.  He  was  the  firm  and  he, 
therefore,  talked  in  the  plural:  it  was  "  We  want," 
"  We  charge,"  "  We  collect";  but  it  was  also  the 
hardest  sort  of  common  sense  that  could  be  made  by 
the  economic  conditions  that  produced  it. 

The  man  was,  in  his  own  affairs,  an  autocrat  and 
governed  his  court  with  a  powerful  hand.  It  was  the 
merchant's  business  to  be  servile  to  his  customers, 
but  it  was,  and  he  saw  to  it,  the  clerks'  business  to 
be  servile  to  the  customers  and  to  the  merchant,  too. 
Yet  Tom's  tyranny  was  beneficent.  He  was  not  of 
those  who  believe  that  the  employer's  duty  is  done 
when  he  has  supervised  the  conduct  of  his  working- 
people  during  working-hours.  He  insisted  that  his 
clerks  go  to  bed  betimes  and  not,  as  he  put  it,  "  run 
the  streets " ;  that  they  attend  church,  preferably 
Tom's  own  church,  at  least  once  of  a  Sunday:  of  all 
of  which,  in  so  small  a  town,  it  was  easy  to  exact  the 
accomplishment.  In  return,  Tom,  secure  in  the  be- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        93 

lief  that  he  was  helping  them  as  well  as  himself,  paid 
his  employes  each  from  a  dollar-and-a-half  to  seven 
dollars  a  week  and  allowed  them  each,  on  half-pay, 
from  seven  to  ten  days'  holiday  every  year.  As  for 
legal  holidays,  when  the  Fourth  of  July,  Thanks- 
giving, Christmas,  or  New  Year's  Day  fell  upon  a 
Sunday,  Tom  won. 

It  was  into  this  atmosphere — into  an  atmosphere  of 
the  clean,  close  odor  of  "  drygoods,"  of  systematized 
scurry,  of  unguessing  oppression  resented  by  un- 
formed scoffing,  and  truckled  to  by  uncondemned  ob- 
sequiousness;  an  atmosphere  of  shop-gossip  and 
wheedling  salesmanship — that  Dan  now  came.  The 
father,  not  because  he  was  democratic  and  wanted 
his  son  to  become  democratic,  but  because  he  was  an 
autocrat  and  wanted  his  heir  to  learn  how  best  to 
be  autocratic,  put  him  behind  the  linen-counter,  under 
instructions  from  a  blond  young  man  of  forty  with 
the  airs  of  a  schoolgirl;  and  there  Dan  spent  his 
days  measuring  cloth  and  tearing  it  and  saying 
"Good-morning,"  "  Yes,  ma'am,"  "  No,  ma'am," 
and  "Anything  more  to-day?"  Out  of  hours,  he 
had  the  conventional  friends  approved  by  his  family 
on  whom  to  call,  but  for  the  most  part  his  evenings, 
because  he  was  full  of  his  dreams,  he  passed,  until 
the  striking  of  ten  o'clock,  when  he  was  always  home, 
wandering  about  the  quiet,  warm,  shaded  streets, 
thinking  of  the  time  when  he  was  to  conquer  the  City 
and  become  a  "  power;  "  or,  as  he  passed  the  couples 
that  also  strolled,  and  as  he  observed  the  twilight 
front-gate  confidences  of  lovers,  thinking  of  the  time 
when  he  also'  should  achieve  Love. 

In    Doncaster,    even   in    Americus,    he    had   suf- 


94        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

fered  random  flutterings  of  the  heart  since  he  out- 
grew Judith,  but  these  flutterings  were  as  brief  as 
they  were  innocent.  They  stopped  short  of  expres- 
sion. They  were  only  the  quivering  of  the  wings 
before  the  bird  learns  to  fly;  and  Dan,  as  he  looked 
back  on  them,  knew  that  this  was  so. 

Yet,  on  his  third  or  fourth  day  in  the  shop,  where 
he  had  begun  by  taking  all  things  as  easily  as  a  young 
god,  Adventure  walked  down  the  aisle  and  was  en- 
sconsed  behind  the  barrier  opposite  his  own.  In 
brief,  on  that  day  Pauline  Riggs  was  trans- 
ferred from  the  dress-goods  counter  to  "  the  no- 
tions." 

She  was  an  ample  girl,  some  two  or  three 
years  Dan's  senior,  and  she  topped'  Dan  by  several 
inches.  She  had  very  white  skin,  with  pink  cheeks, 
a  set  of  even  teeth  much  in  evidence,  and  a  mar- 
velous mass  of  black  hair  that  she  wore  heaped  high 
on  her  head.  Her  eyes,  which  were  also  black,  were 
knowing  eyes,  and  she  had  a  molar  smile  that  Dan 
at  once  thought  entrancing  and  that  certain  other 
people  likened  to  the  smile  of  a  child-eating  tiger. 
Her  enemies  to  the  contrary,  she  was  in  reality  only 
a  comely  person,  poor,  but  a  simple  soul  merely  rather 
frankly  desirous  of  bettering  herself  in  the 
world. 

At  first  she  did  not  look  at  Dan  and  she  contrived 
so  not  to  look  at  him  that  any  critic  of  elder  growth 
would  have  considered  her  negligence  pointed;  but 
Dan  watched  her  with  overt  admiration.  He  thought 
her  beautiful  and  he  was  sure  that  her  clothes  were 
the  height  of  fashion.  Perhaps  the  critic  of  elder 
growth,  or  more  readily  any  other  girl  in  the  shop, 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        95 

would  have  been  less  certain  about  these  points;  but 
even  such  a  critic  would  at  any  rate  have  granted  to 
Miss  Riggs  the  Order  of  Prettiness.  When  Dan 
watched  her  deft  white  hands  assisting  a  tight  glove 
across  the  tough  knuckles  of  a  customer — for  the 
gloves  were  on  the  "  notions  "  counter  in  those  early 
times — he  decided  that  she  was  the  most  splendid 
creature  that  he  had  ever  seen. 

"  Who's  that  girl?  "  he  asked  of  the  blond  young 
man  of  forty  that  worked  beside  him. 

The  blond  young  man  of  forty,  whose  name  was 
Hostetter,  giggled. 

"  That's  that  there  Riggs  girl,"  said  he. 

"Riggs?"  repeated  Dan.  "I  don't  know  any 
Riggses." 

"  Likely  not.  They  just  come  to  town  from  Lemon 
Place.  Her  old  man's  a  freight-brakeman  on  the 
road.  Drinks  like  a  fish." 

"Oh!"  said  Dan. 

He  was  disappointed.  He  would  have  likecj 
Pauline  to  be  the  daughter  of  a  physician  or  a  bank- 
president;  but  he  reflected  that,  in  such  a  case,  she 
would  not  be  behind  the  counter  opposite.  He  looked 
at  her  again,  and  his  heart  beat  faster. 

That  evening,  at  the  closing  hour,  he  slipped  out 
ahead  of  his  father  and  held  the  door  open  for  Miss 
Riggs. 

"  Good-evening,"  he  said,  but  his  voice  trembled. 

Her  dark  eyes  raised,  she  looked  at  his. 

"It's  young  Mr.  Barnes,  isn't  it?"  she  inquired. 
"  I  don't  thinly  I've  had  the  pleasure  of  being  intro- 
duced to  you."  And  she  turned  away  and  walked 
up  the  street  alone. 


96        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Dan  looked  after  her,  sobered  and  ashamed.  Ac- 
cording to  his  standards,  she  had  behaved  "  like  a 
real  lady." 

§  3.  It  appeared,  however,  that  the  statement 
that  there  had  been  no  introduction  passed,  with 
Miss  Riggs,  as  itself  introductory.  The  next  morn- 
ing, with  a  brilliant  show  of  teeth,  she  smiled  care- 
lessly across  the  aisle  at  Dan,  who  blushed  with  de- 
light at  this  recognition  and  was  immediately  plunged 
into  discontent  because  the  recognition  ended  there 
and  he  was  given  no  further  glance  that  day.  When 
evening  came,  Pauline  managed  somehow  to  out- 
distance him  to  the  door,  and  it  was  not  until  the  end 
of  the  week  that,  again  at  the  doorway,  he  had  a 
word  with  her.  Then  his  striding  boldly  beside  her 
was  the  result  of  many  resolutions,  all  of  which  had 
theretofore  weakened  at  the  moment  for  accomplish- 
ment. 

"  May — may  I  walk  a  little  way  with  you?  "  he 
asked. 

Pauline  was  looking  straight  ahead. 

"Is  it  on  your  ways  home,  Mr.  Barnes?"  she 
countered. 

"  No,"  he  admitted;  "  it  isn't,  exactly,"  (It  lay, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  she  knew  it,  in  the  precisely 
opposite  direction.)  "  But  I'd  like  to,  just  the 


same." 


He  paused,  yet  she  said  nothing. 

"  That  is,  if  you  don't  mind,"  he  humbly  added. 

Then,  as  they  had  drawn  away  from  the  other 
shop-folk,  she  looked  at  him :  one  flash  of  her  black 
eyes. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        97 

"I  wouldn't  mind,"  she  said;  "  only  people  are 
horrid,  Mr.  Barnes:  they  talk." 

"What  about?"  asked  Dan. 

"  I  mean  I'm  afraid  they'd  talk  if  you  did  this 
often.  You  see,  your  father  is  the  boss  of  the  store, 
an'  I  only  work  there." 

Dan  flushed. 

"Let  'em  talk!"  he  said. 

Pauline  shrugged  her  shoulders.  She  always  wore 
a  shirtwaist  so  cut  as  to  make  her  shoulders  seem 
broad  and  square,  and  she  carried  herself  and  pouted 
in  a  manner  that  distinguished  her  as  an  admirer  of 
the  novels  of  Mr.  R.  H.  Davis  and  the  pictures  of 
Mr.  C.  D.  Gibson. 

"Humph!  "  she  said:  "  You  can." 

Which  at  once  put  Dan  into  an  apologetic  con- 
fusion and  made  him  still  more  desirous  of  walking 
home  with  her. 

Walk  home  with  her  he  at  any  rate  then  certainly 
did,  and  several  times  thereafter.  The  two-story 
frame  house  in  which  the  Riggses  lived  was  one  of 
several  such  owned  by  Thomas  Barnes;  and  Dan  at 
the  end  of  these  walks,  generally  stopped  at  the  two 
steps  that  led  to  the  front  door,  which  was  also  the 
door  to  the  parlor.  Once  he  went  inside  with  Pauline 
(he  nearly  missed  his  supper  that  night,  and  explana- 
tions were  difficult),  and  there,  though  his  one 
glimpse  of  her  bleary-eyed  and  unshaven  father  was 
a  shock  to  him,  he  accounted  to  himself  for  her  fat, 
aproned  mother  as  "  a  motherly  woman  "  and  looked 
at  the  shabby,  room  that  received  him  only  through 
the  golden  glow  that  belonged  to  any  place  inhabited 
by  Pauline. 


98        THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

§  4.  Their  romance  went  the  way  that  all  such 
romances  go.  The  walk  home  from  the  store 
was  discontinued  lest  the  clerks  should  "  talk,"  for 
Pauline  was  too  much  a  "  lady  "  not  to  remind  Dan 
of  what  she  called  "  the  position "  in  which  she 
placed  herself  by  their  friendship;  and  so,  naturally 
enough,  evening  walks  followed:  walks  under  the 
low-branching  trees  of  the  quieter  streets,  always 
rigorously  decorous,  always  brief,  and  always  with 
an  accompaniment  of  conversation  that  was  fre- 
quently fragmentary  and  never  brilliant. 

It  was  a  commonplace  comedy  that  to  neither  of 
its  chief  characters  seemed  commonplace  at  all. 
Pauline  had  acquired,  through  her  newspaper,  an 
appetite  for  the  more  intimate  domestic  incidents 
in  the  lives  of  millionaires'  wives  and  daughters ;  she 
had  a  truly  amazing  memory  for  the  marriages  and 
divorces  of  persons  in  that  state  of  life  to  which  it 
had  not  pleased  God  to  call  her;  and  frequently  she 
talked  of  these  things  with  a  familiarity  that  Dan 
found  both  entertaining  and  instructive.  More  often, 
when  they  talked  at  all  consecutively,  they  talked  of 
themselves,  as  the  young  will,  and,  because,  like 
most  young  people,  they  never  thought  of  growing 
old,  they  concerned  themselves  with  happiness. 

It  was  good  to  sit  close  on  the  stone-coping  of  the 
broad  front  yard  far  back  on  which  stood  the  old 
Chouse  where  the  Doreamus  family  lived — so  far 
that  the  trespassers  felt  almost  masters — and  there  to 
watch,  themselves  hidden  by  the  shadows,  other  lov- 
ers, often  clerks  from  their  own  shop,  pass  un- 
noting.  It  was  good  to  feel  her  warm  breath  when 
she  whispered  to  him  sentences  that,  innocent  as  they 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE        99 

were,  she  did  not  want  the  passersby  to  hear;  and  it 
was  better  still  to  take  her  firm  hand  and  help  her 
up  the  coping  or  down  from  it :  the  more  so  because 
each  knew  that  this  assistance  was  unneeded,  and 
knew  that  each  knew  it. 

But  Dan  was  not  satisfied.  He  began  to  feel  that 
in  this  relationship  there  was  still  something  lack- 
ing, something  vital  lacking,  and  that  he  had  yet  to 
find  the  salt  of  life. 

What  was  it?  He  had  his  guess  and  shuddered 
and  tried  to  put  it  away  from  him,  knowing  that  it 
would  return  and  delight  him  by  its  return.  Was 
love,  real  love,  closer  to  the  things  of  sex,  as  he  knew 
them,  than  he  had  ever  imagined?  He  would  think 
of  this  at  night  when  he  had  gone  to  bed,  and  then 
he  would  resolve  not  to  think  of  it.  He  would  shut 
it  from  him  and  fall  to  constructing  his  next  con- 
versation with  Pauline :  a  conversation  all  romance 
and  purity.  He  was  forever  preparing  speeches  for 
her  and  forever  ashamed  to  utter  them;  but  insidi- 
ously, steadily,  the  great  under-current  of  his^  life 
was  swinging  toward  this  new  possible  channel.  In- 
capable of  seeing  the  fault  of  his  training,  and  in- 
capable of  seeing  how  that  training  was  the  result 
of  a  convention  that  was  itself  the  effect  of  an 
economic  state,  he  did  not  abandon  his  secret 
habits:  he  was  only  made  the  more  miserable  by 
them. 

One  evening  after  he  had  left  Pauline,  he  resolved 
that  on  the  next  evening  he  would  lend  her  his  fra- 
ternity-pin. SJie  had,  indeed,  been  admiring  it  openly 
with  exactly  the  expectation  that  he  would  present 
it  to  her;  but  he  had  not  had  the  hardihood  to  make 


ioo      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  offer.  On  the  evening  following,  his  courage 
again  retreated,  but  at  their  meeting  twenty-four 
hours  after  this  failure  he  took  the  plunge. 

"  That  certainly  is  a  pretty  pin,"  she  said. 

They  were  seated  on  the  coping  as  before,  and  it 
was  really  too  dark  for  her  to  see  the  object  of  her 
admiration. 

"  Ye-yes,"   assented  Dan. 

"  What's  those  letters  on  it?  "  she  demanded. 

"They're  Greek,"  said  Dan,  proudly:  "Omega, 
Beta,  Phi." 

"What  do  they  mean?" 

"  Oh,  wouldn't  you  like  to  know?  " 

"  That's  why  I  asked." 

"  Well,  I  won't  tell." 

"Why?" 

"  'Cause  I  daresn't." 

"  I  know !  "  Pauline  laughed.  "  You  swear  a  oath 
an'  all  that,  don't  you?" 

"  Maybe  I  do." 

"An'  nobody  can  wear  it  'cept  you?" 

"  Oh,  some  other  people." 

"But  only  members?"  asked  Pauline.  "No 
girls?" 

"  One  girl  can,"  said  Dan. 

"Which  one?" 

He  was  near  it  now,  palpitatingly  near  it.     He 
felt  a  lump  in  his  throat  and  hated  it  because  he 
knew  it  would  make  his  voice  sound  queer. 
((  You  know,"  he  whispered,  hoarsely. 

She  shook  her  head.  She  was  still  bending  over 
his  waistcoat  to  peer  at  the  pin.  Her  eyes  also 
assured  her  that  the  street  was  empty.  Dan  could 


THE  SENTENCE  OF 

feel  her  cheek  brush  the  cloth  just  over  his  thump- 
ing heart. 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  pouted.  And  then  suddenly: 
"  Tell  me,"  she  urged. 

"  Don't  you  wish  I  would?  "  asked  Dan. 

It  was  not  at  all  what  he  had  meant  to  say.  He 
had  prepared  a  solemn  and  tender  speech,  and  here 
he  was  bantering  with  her !  He  despised  himself  for 
his  impulsive  stupidity,  but  he  could  not  for  the  life 
of  him  recall  the  words  that  he  had  prepared  by  way 
of  stating  his  offer. 

"  I  bet  I  can  guess  which  girl  can  wear  it,"  she 
replied. 

She  sat  swiftly  erect  and  turned  her  head  away. 

Dan  felt  that  he  had  somehow  hurt  her,  and  he 
cursed  himself  soundly;  but  all  that  he  could  say 
was: 

"Who?" 

"  Some  girl  you  like,"  said  Pauline. 

"What  girl?" 

"  You  know  lots,  I  bet." 

That  flattered  him.  He  simply  had  to  admit  the 
soft  impeachment. 

"  A  few,"  he  said,  with  transparent  modesty. 

"Well,"  said  Pauline,  "one  of  them." 

"Of  course  it's  one  of  them,  Pauline;  but 
which?" 

"  I  don't  know  the  one,  but  I  know  the  kind." 

"  I  bet  you  don't  know  the  one  I  mean." 

"  I  don't  mean  what  you  mean,  anyhow,"  said 
Pauline.  .' 

"  Then,  I  mean  you're  mean,"  retorted  Dan. 

They    both    laughed    at    this    masterstroke;    but 


OF  SILENCE 


Pauline  was  soon  again  serious.  Her  head  lowered, 
she  plucked  at  her  dress. 

"  I  mean  some  girl  whose  father's  rich,"  she  said: 
"  like  yours." 

Dan's  fingers  trembled,  but  he  unhooked  the  pin 
from  his  waistcoat  and  held  it  out  to  her  in  the  palm 
of  his  hand. 

"  I'd  like  you  to  wear  it,"  he  said. 

He  had  wanted  to  pin  it  on  her  dress,  but  he  did 
not  dare  to  do  this;  and  he  found,  at  all  events,  in 
the  quick  touch  of  her  fingers  as  she  plucked  the  pin 
from  him,  a  thrill  that  was  almost  sufficient  reward 
for  his  offering. 

He  tried  to  say  more,  but  he  was  utterly  at  a  loss 
now,  and,  when  she  would  not  break  the  ensuing 
silence,  he  only  remarked  throatily: 

"  We're  getting  in  some  new  striped  muslins  to- 
morrow. I  saw  the  samples.  They're  fine." 

When  Dan  climbed  into  bed  that  night  he  went 
over  the  entire  interview  and  thought  of  all  the  bril- 
liant things  that  he  might  have  said,  and  ached  with 
regret.  Then  he  thought  of  the  stupid  things  that 
he  had  said  and  was  sure  that  she  would  torture  from 
them  slurs  that  he  had  not  meant  to  put  there;  and 
then  he  burned  with  shame  and  anger. 

§  5.  Pauline  wore  the  pin  in  the  store,  where 
it  attracted  attention,  and  where  Dan  was  as  proud 
as  Pauline  of  the  attention  that  it  attracted.  That 
evening,  in  his  best  and  most  outspoken  clothes,  he 
called  at  her  home. 

Pauline,  with  a  smile  that  showed  her  white  teeth, 
entered  the  room  wearing  a  new  shirtwaist  and  a 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       103 

general  radiance  that  glorified  her  shoddy  surround- 
ings. 

"  Like  this  waist?  "  she  asked;  and  she  turned  so 
that  he  could  see  not  only  the  fullness  of  her  bust, 
but  also  her  broad  shoulders  and  straight  back. 

"  Cert,"  responded  Dan  in  the  slang  of  the  day. 
"It's- a  daisy." 

"  How  does  it  fit?"  asked  Pauline,  just  then 
turning  in  the  opposite  direction.  She  knew  that  it 
did  something  more  than  fit:  that  it  accentuated  the 
better  and  charitably  concealed  the  worse. 

"  It  fits  splendidly  in  the  back,"  said  Dan,  who 
wanted  to  see  the  pin  on  her  breast. 

"  Yes,"  she  answered,  facing  him,  "  but  I  face 
forward." 

She  gave  him  the  delight  of  her  flashing  smile. 
Her  eyes  shone  with  youth  and  the  consciousness  of 
looking  her  best. 

"It's  fine,"  said  Dan;  "and  the  pin's  just  great 
there." 

She  touched  the  pin  caressingly. 

"  Do  you  mind  if  we  don't  go  for  a  walk  this 
evening?  "  she  asked. 

"  Why,  no,"  said  Dan,  looking  about  in  a  dis- 
appointment that  directly  contradicted  his  words. 
"  I  don't  mind,  only " 

"  Oh,  we'll  be  alone.  My  father's  down  the  road, 
and  mom's  well  trained.  I'd  walk  all  right,  but  corn- 
in'  home  from  the  store  I  tripped  over  somethin' 
an'  hurt  my  limb." 

In  Americus,  where  husbands  keep  their  wives  in 
all  possible  ignorance,'  and  where  men  and  women 
are  expected  to  acquire  their  modicum  of  sex-knowl- 


104      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

edge  some  time  in  their  later  teens  by  a  kind  of 
inspirational  and  spontaneous  ignition  of  the  divine 
flame  of  comprehension  from  within — in  that  town, 
as  in  its  hundreds  of  fellows,  there  are  no  legs: 
there  are  but  "  limbs,"  and  these  hesitantly. 

"  I  hope  you  weren't  badly  hurt,"  said  Dan  in 
real  anxiety. 

"  Oh,  no.  Nothin'  but  a  twist.  Won't  you  sit 
down?" 

Dan  put  out  his  hand  for  the  nearest  chair. 

"  Don't  take  that  one,"  Pauline  warned  him :  "  it'll 
tumble;  it's  busted.  You  better  sit  here  by  me."  She 
ensconced  herself  on  a  lumpy  sofa  of  which  one  leg 
was  missing,  its  place  being  supplied  by  a  pile  of 
books. 

The  boy  sat  beside  her,  and  they  talked  much  as 
they  were  in  the  habit  of  talking,  yet  somewhat  con- 
strainedly because  of  Dan's  unfamiliarity  with  his 
new  environment. 

"  That  light's  kind  of  glarin',"  said  Pauline  at 
last,  glancing  at  an  ancient  chandelier  suspended 
from  the  ceiling. 

"Yes,"  agreed  Dan;  "it  is— kind  of." 

There  were  a  few  seconds  during  which  neither 
spoke.  The  girl  raised  her  hand  to  shade  her  eyes 
and  then,  as  Dan  still  hesitated,  she  said: 

"  Couldn't  you  lower  it  jest  a  little?  " 

She  was  not  a  bad  girl.  As  the  world  counts  such 
things,  she  was  pure,  and  she  proposed  to  remain 
pure  until  she  was  safely  married.  She  wanted  com- 
fort and  hated  poverty  too  much  to  risk  anything ; 
but  she  was  in  a  hurry  to  reach  the  altar,  and  when 
she  wanted  to  catch  a  man  she  insisted  on  low  lights, 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       105 

as  the  ready-made-clothing  merchant  when  he  wants 
to  trap  a  customer.  In  most  small  towns  the  natives 
never  ask  what  man  a  girl  accepted;  they  ask  what 
fellow  she  caught;  and  Pauline  had  been  reared  in  a 
town  that  was  even  smaller  than  Americus. 

Dan  rose,  stumbling  over  his  own  feet  as  he  did  so, 
and  reached  for  the  key  of  the  only  burning 
gas-jet. 

"Low?"  he  inquired  and  blushed  and  grinned 
as  he  looked  for  her  answer. 

"  Not  too  low,"  said  Pauline,  and  giggled. 

Dan  turned  the  key  smartly:  the  light  faded  to  a 
mere  spark. 

"Oh!"  cried  Pauline. 

She  sprang  to  her  feet  and  somehow  collided  with 
her  suitor. 

Dan,  in  a  panic  of  amazement,  felt  his  left  arm  en- 
circle her  copious  waist. 

"Dan!"     She  barely  breathed  the  name. 

She  had  an  awkwardly  yielding  manner  that 
brought  her  half-seen  head  upon  his  shoulder. 

"  I — I   like  you,    Pauline,"   he  whispered. 

His  right  hand  held  hers,  but,  glorious  as  this  was, 
and  mature  as  he  said  to  himself  that  it  must  be,  it 
served  only  to  make  him  want  to  kiss  her. 

"I — I "  he  stammered.  He  was  trying  to  say 

that  he  loved  her,  but  what  he  did  say  was  mere 
repetition:  "  I  do  like  you,  Pauline." 

He  wanted  to  kiss  her. 

He  kissed  her. 

It  was  wonderful.  It  was  what  he  had  dreamed 
of  and  trembled  to  dream  of,  and  yet,  now  that  the 
dream  had  become  a  reality,  it  appeared  to  be  some- 


106      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

thing  essentially  unfinished.  It  left  him,  as  indeed 
it  left  her,  with  a  puzzled  sense  of  incomplete- 
ness. 

"  Do  you  like  me?  "  gasped  Dan. 

She  cuddled  her  face  between  his  neck  and  shoul- 
der. She  had  to  bend  to  do  it,  but  she  was  none 
the  less  sincere  in  the  implication  contained  in  her 
reply. 

"  Can't  you  guess?  "  she  asked. 

"  But  do  you?  "  persisted  Dan;  because  such  of  his 
imaginings  as  were  solely  romantic  had  always 
stopped  at  the  first  kiss,  and  he  did  not  know  what  on 
earth  to  say  next.  "  Do  you?  " 

"  Yes,  Dan,"  she  said;  and,  after  a  moment,  she 
added:  "An*  I  trust  you." 

"  Trust  me?  "  said  Dan.    "  How  do  you  mean?  " 

"  Don't  you  know?" 

;i  Well,  of  course,  we  can't  be — be  married  for 
a  long  while — not  till  I've  got  on  in  business — and 
of  course  I  can't  right  away  tell  my  father;  but  we'll 
be  married  some  day,  all  right." 

She  had  thought  of  that,  and  she  did  not  approve 
of  delays.  In  Americus,  engagements  meant  mar- 
riage. To  be  engaged  and  then  to  be  married  was  a 
respectable  thing  for  the  man,  and  the  best  of  all 
good  fortune  for  the  girl;  but  for  a  girl  to  be  en- 
gaged and  not  to  marry  was  to  provide  subject- 
matter  for  corner-loafers'  whispers,  and  discussion 
at  the  sessions  of  the  Dorcas  Society.  Still,  she  had 
decided  that  a  long  engagement  to  the  son  of  Rich 
Tom  Barnes  was  better  than  a  short  one  to  Mr. 
Hostetter,  for  instance,  the  blond  young  clerk  of 
forty.  (Hostetter  had,  in  fact,  lately  given  gentle 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      107 

premonitions  of  promise),  and  she  was,  moreover,  a 
good  deal  in  love  with  Dan. 

"  I  know,"  she  therefore  said,  "  that  we  can't 
get  right  away  married.  But  it  wasn't  that  I 
meant." 

"Then,"  asked  Dan,  "  what  did  you  mean?" 

"  I  meant  I  was  sure,"  whispered  the  girl,  "  you 
wouldn't  do  anythin'  that  'd  make  you  lose  your 
respect  for  me."  ' 

It  was  the  old  statement:  all  the  world  over  the 
most  pathetic  and  the  most  certain  speech  for  a 
woman  that  fears  the  results  of  the  thing  that  she 
wants  and  protests  against.  Yet  it  had,  this  time, 
its  effect.  Though  they  parted  that  night  with  pas- 
sion that  was  slow  to  awake,  but  strong  to  sway,  they 
parted  without  offense  against  the  conventional  code. 

During  the  evenings  that  succeeded,  though  they 
advanced  and  retreated,  strained  and  fought  free, 
wracked  nerves  with  denial  and  inflicted  unguessed 
wounds  with  scrupulous  compromises,  they  managed 
in  some  way  to  maintain  their  standard  to  the  end. 

§  6.     But  the  end  was  not  long  in  arriving. 

One  morning  in  midsummer,  Hostetter  came  into 
Old  Tom's  office  with  a  piece  of  news.  He  told, 
with  much  evident  hesitation,  about  the  fraternity- 
phi  that -Pauline  Riggs  was  wearing. 

4  You  don't  mean  to  say  that  my  boy  give  it  to 
her !  "  thundered  Tom. 

"  Oh,  no,"  mumbled  the  clerk.  "  I  only  thought 
she  might  V* picked  it  up,  an'  I  didn't  like  to  say 
nothin'  to  her  about  it  'less  she'd  think  I  thought 
.she  stole  it;  an'  I  didn't  like  to  say  nothin'  to,  your: 


108      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

son  about  it  'less  he'd  think  I  thought  he  give  it  to 
her." 

"  All  right,"  said  Tom.    "  Good-day  to  you." 

He  finished  some  letter-reading  that  the  clerk  had 
interrupted  and  then  put  on  his  hat  and  walked  to 
the  Riggses'  home. 

Bill  Riggs  was  just  back  from  a  "  run  "  with  his 
crew  to  Perth  Amboy,  and  was  in  bed  when  Tom 
called;  but,  clad  in  shirt  and  trousers,  his  bare  feet 
thrust  into  a  pair  of  carpet-slippers,  he  came  down- 
stairs immediately.  He  listened  with  amazement  and 
anger  to  what  Barnes  had  to  tell  him.  He  had  been 
no  party  to  his  daughter's  matrimonial  schemes,  and 
he  keenly  suspected  that  his  wife  had  fostered  them 
and  kept  him  in  ignorance.  Such  deception  was  of  it- 
self enough  to  enlist  his  sympathies  upon  the  other 
side,  the  more  so  since  he  saw  that  his  daughter's  side 
was  helpless;  and  he  had,  in  addition,  the  disquieting 
consciousness  that  the  elder  Barnes  was  a  forbearing 
landlord,  whereas  Riggs  himself  was  not  always  a 
promptly-paying  tenant. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  fire  my  girl  outen  your  store, 
Mr.  Barnes?"  he  asked. 

Old  Tom  chewed  his  under  lip  until  his  chin- 
whiskers  stood  at  a  right-angle  to  his  face. 

"  That  depends  on  what  you  mean  to  do  with 
her,"  he  answered. 

"  Well,"  said  Riggs,  "  she's  pretty  big  fer  it;  but 
she's  big  enough  to  know  better'n  this  here,  too,  so  I 
guess  the  least  I  kin  do  is  to  beat  her  an'  send  her  to 
bed."  He  thought  it  over  and  concluded:  "  An'  the 
old  woman." 

Barnes  nodded. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      109 

"  Your  wife's  your  own  business,"  he  said;  "but 
your  daughter's  kind  of  meddled  with  my  business, 
an'  I  guess  you're  right  about  her.  Yes,  sir:  I  guess 
you're  right  about  her.  Well,  if  you  think  that'll 
stop  her  nonsense — I  dunno.  She's  a  good  sales- 
lady. You  get  the  foolishness  out  of  her  head,  an' 
I'll  keep  her  job  for  her." 

§  7.  That  evening  he  went  through  supper  in 
much  his  usual  manner,  but  he  took  his  time  with 
the  meal,  and,  when  his  son,  after  evincing  many 
signs  of  restlessness,  rose  to  leave  the  table,  Old 
Tom  inquired  in  even  tones  : 

"  Where  you  goin',  Dan'l?" 

Dan  did  not  like  that  attempt  upon  his  full  bap- 
tismal name.  He  stopped  short. 

"  Out,"  he  replied. 

"  I  guessed  that,"  said  Tom.  "  Seems  to  me  you 
go  out  a  good  deal  lately." 

"  I'm  in  the  store  all  day,"  Dan  answered,  un- 
easily. He  was  certain  now  that  something  had  been 
discovered. 

"  Well,"  said  Tom,  "  I  want  to  have  a  little  talk 
with  you  first,  Dan'l.  Come  upstairs." 

He  rose,  heavily. 

Mrs.  Barnes  looked  at  him  with  fear  in  her  eyes. 

"What  is  it,  father?"  she  faltered. 

"  Nothin'  much,"  said  Tom,  his  stiff  upper  lip 
twisting  into  a  smile.  "  Caff-love;  that's  all.  Come 
on,  Dan'l." 

He  went  out  of  the  room,  and  Dan,  his  mother 
reaching  to  press  his  hand  as  he  left  her,  slowly 
followed. 


no      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

When  they  had  come  to  the  boy's  room  and  Tom 
closed  the  door,  the  father  turned  upon  his  son. 

"  Now,  then,"  he  demanded,  "  what's  this  crazi- 
ness  about  drunken  Bill  Riggs's  daughter?" 

Dan  winced.  All  the  romance  in  him  was  wounded 
by  the  words  and  tone,  desperately  wounded. 

"  Nothing  wrong,  anyhow,"  he  answered,  hotly. 
"  I  don't  care  what  her  father  is.  She's  a  nice  girl, 
and  I— I " 

"  Well,"  said  his  father,  "you  what?" 

"  I  like  her,"  Dan  lamely  ended. 

"  Like  her  !"  echoed  Tom  in  his  rasping  mono- 
tone. "  Coin'  to  marry  her,  I  guess,  ain't  you?  At 
your  age,  an'  her  old  enough,  near,  to  be  my  wife — 
an'  her  family  railroaders!  A  clerk  in  my  place! 
Coin'  to  marry  that  big,  fat  girl  that  makes  you 
look  like  a  dwarf  an'  has  a  head  full  of  cheap  store- 
teeth  !  " 

"  Store-teeth!  "  cried  Dan.     "  They're  not!  " 

"  That  shows  how  much  you  know  about  things," 
Tom  retorted.  The  acquired  grammar  of  his  later 
life  now  fell  completely  away  from  him.  "  Any  fool 
with  a  cross-eye'd  see  they  was  false,  the  whole 
mouthful  of  'em — an'  a  poor  job,  too !  If  you  think 
I  ain't  tellin'  you  right,  go  ast  Doc  Bigler :  he  made 
'em  for  her.  Like  as  not,  she  takes  'em  out  every 
night  an'  puts  'em  in  water." 

In  his  clumsy  way,  he  jeered  for  half  an  hour. 
He  held  the  doll  before  Dan's  unwilling  gaze  and 
stripped  her  bare,  and  when  he  left  the  lad  it  was 
with  a  certainty  that  he  had  ended  this  affair  forever. 

He  went  away  with  a  final  sneer;  but  when  he 
came  into  the  library  where  his  wife,  with  troubled 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       in 

face,  was  awaiting  him,  the  scorn  had  gone  from 
his  lips,  and  his  hazel  eyes  were  softer. 

"What  was  it,  father?"  she  asked. 

Tom  laid  his  knotted  hand  on  her  fast-graying 
hair. 

"NothinV  he  said  quietly;  "  nothin'  but  what  I 
told  you :  caff-love.  Just  a  foolish  notion  in  his  little 
head,  that's  all." 

"  But,  father,  it  wasn't "     She  paused  in  awe 

before  the  possibility. 

"  No,  no,"  he  answered;  "  not  that,  mother.  Not 
with  our  boy.  Please  don't  ask  no  questions — please 
don't  ask  any  questions  of  me;  but  for  a  couple  of 
days,  be  kind  to  Danny." 

Her  gaze  had  a  wide  reproach. 

"Have  I  ever  been  anything  else  to  him?"  she 
replied. 

'  Then  be  extra  kind,"  he  said,  and  patted  her  head 
again :  "  be  extra  kind  for  a  while.  It  won't  do  for 
me  to  be ;  I  can't  dare  seem  to  change  my  mind,  but — 
but  he's  a  real  good  boy,  mother;  I  know  he's  a  real 
good  boy." 

Sarah  Barnes  was  sensitive,  which  is  to  say  a 
legatee  of  unhappiness ;  but  she  was  obedient,  too,  and 
so  she  would  openly  press  no  further  for  specific  de- 
tails when  she  saw  that,  upon  the  subject  of  their 
son,  her  husband  also  was  sensitive. 

"  I  guess,"  she  said  reflectively,  "  that  all  young 
people  want  their  own  way.  It  belongs  to  their  young 
years." 

"  Yes,"  a&ented  Tom,  "  an'  most  of  the  people 
that  have  gone  to  hell  have  found  that  the  way  that 
leads  there  is  their  own." 


ii2      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  But  you  don't "    Mrs.  Barnes  was  knitting, 

and  her  large  hands  trembled  over  their  task  so  that 
the  needles  clicked  needlessly  together.  "  You  don't 
think  our  Dan's  in  danger?  " 

Tom  shook  his  rugged  head. 

"  Not  him.     I  told  you  no.    Not  a  bit  of  it." 

"  Still,"  said  Mrs.  Barnes,  bending  far  over  her 
work,  "  you  know  you're  going  to  tell  him — things — 
sometime." 

"  Hum,"  said  Tom.  He  walked  to  the  window 
and  looked  out :  he  did  not  like  to  face  his  wife  when 
he  spoke  of  such  matters.  "  I  guess  he's  picked  up 
all  he  needs  by  this  time.  It'd  be  kind  of  hard  to 
tell  him  now:  he's  so  growd — grown — up.  Besides  " 
— he  found  an  excellent  reason  and  seized  on  it  avidly 
— "  the  boy's  just  been  makin'  caff-love  an'  not  got 
into  trouble  of  that  sort.  If  a  boy  can  make  caff- 
love  an'  keep  away  from — from  the  other,  he's 
standin'  a  pretty  good  test — mighty  good.  No,  no; 
he's  all  right,  Dan  is." 

"  I  hope  so,"  said  Mrs.  Barnes.  "  Do  you  think 
he'll  be  thinking  of  getting  married  soon,  father?" 

Tom  snorted.  His  mind  reverted  curtly  to  the 
talking-to  that  he  had  just  given  his  son. 

"  I  do  not,"  he  emphatically  answered.  He 
paused.  "  But  when  he  does  think  of  it,"  he  pres- 
ently resumed,  "  it  must  be  a  nice  girl  an'  a  girl  whose 
people  have  means  an'  position." 

"  There  aren't  many  nice  girls  in  town,"  the 
mother  persisted. 

"  There  ain't  any,"  corrected  Tom,  with  suspicious 
inclusiveness. 

"  Well,  I  wouldn't  say  that,"  replied  Mrs.  Barnes, 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       113 

her  quiet  eyes  on  her  husband's  face.  "  There  is  that 
Miss  Doreamus.  She's  an  old  family  and  nice,  too; 
but  then  the  Weiperts  have  about  got  her  for  their 
Jerre.  They  grab  everything. " 

Old  Tom  was  between  laughter  at  what  she  said 
and  anger  at  the  recalled  designs  of  Pauline  Riggs. 

"  Mother,"  he  declared,  "  you  beat  all;  you  do  so! 
How  old  do  you  think  our  boy  is,  anyhow?  Still, 
you  can  be  sure  of  one  thing,"  he  added  sternly: 
"  my  son  ain't  going  to  fall  in  love  with  a  store  clerk, 
not  if  I  can  stop  it.  Store  girls  know  too  much." 

Mrs.  Barnes  said  nothing,  because  she  had  suc- 
ceeded, without  appearing  to  try,  in  learning  all  that 
she  had  wanted  to  learn.  She  was  in  many  ways  a 
wise  woman,  so  she  knew  when  to  stop  a  line  of  in- 
quiry; but,  although  she  never  mentioned  the  matter 
to  Dan,  the  boy  chanced  that  night  to  overhear  his 
mother  praying  for  him  to  that  God  in  whom  he  now 
only  formally  believed. 


VII 


TOM  BARNES,  as  one  has  recently  said,  was 
sure  that  he  had  ended  the  calf-love  in  his 
son's  heart.  He  had  ended  it;  but  he  had 
come  near  to  ending  something  else.  In  prevent- 
ing, by  the  best  means  known  to  him,  the  further 
progress  of  a  foolhardy  attachment,  he  had  sorely 
stricken  romance;  he  had  dealt  a  heavy  blow  at  the 
dream  that  is  as  fine  as  it  is  fond;  he  had  unsettled 
the  attitude  that  youth  instinctively  assumes  toward 
woman.  Would  the  wounds  heal  and  the  thing  that 
was  broken  be  mended? 

Dan  suffered.  There  were  moments  when  he  hated 
his  father,  moments  when  he  hated  Pauline  for  de- 
ceiving him  and  trapping  him,  moments  when  he 
hated  himself,  when  he  hated  womankind,  when  he 
hated  and  feared  the  whole  world  that  must  mark 
and  mock  him. 

Yet  he  had  to  face  his  world  and  all  the  people 
that  were  in  it.  He  had  to  slink  into  the  store  and 
be  at  once  ashamed  to  look  at  Pauline  and  compelled 
to  steal  glances  at  her  accused  teeth.  He  was  sure, 
at  first,  that  the  other  clerks  knew  and  whispered; 
but,  since  not  the  least  hurt  from  which  he  writhed 
was  the  hurt  to  his  pride  and  his  boyish  pretense  at 
maturity,  so,  unreasonably,  his  pride  was  still  more, 
deeply  wounded  when  he  observed,  to  his  stupefaction, 
that  Pauline,  unruffled,  was  unmistakably  beginning 
to  "  make  up  to  "  the  blond  Mr.  Hostetter. 

114 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      115 

Dan  smiled  bitterly.  He  became  aware  that  to 
smile  bitterly  was  the  proper  action  for  a  broken- 
hearted lover;  but,  deep  in  his  soul,  he  was  meditating 
another  metaphor:  he  was  tired  of  wading;  he  wanted 
to  swim. 

§  2.  Snagsie  Fry  helped  him:  Snagsie,  who  sidled 
again  across  Dan's  life,  his  long,  awkward  body 
grown  longer  and  more  awkward,  but  with  his  bulg- 
ing forehead  and  retreating  chin,  his  hook-nose,  and 
his  sapient  smile  unchanged. 

Snagsie  had  "  quit  school  "  long  ago.  He  had 
secured  some  sort  of  obscure  employment  at  Harris- 
burg  under  a  firm  of  promoters  that  needed  favor* 
from  the  Pennsylvania  legislature;  but  that  employ- 
ment, for  reasons  undisclosed,  had  now  ended,  and 
Snagsie  was  back  in  Americus  for  a  time  with  a 
greater  knowledge  of  life  and  a  greater  disdain  for 
mankind  than  he  had  ever  yet  possessed.  His 
wisdom  was  no  longer  theoretical  and  he  had,  by  as- 
suming that  his  old  friends  were  equally  experienced, 
a  way  with  him  that  exalted  him  in  their  opinion 
and  abashed  them  for  their  secret  consciousness  that 
their  experience  was  really  at  the  zero-mark. 

"  There's  never  anything  to  do  in  this  old  hole," 
complained  Dan,  who  was  just  then  naturally  thinking 
that  he  detested  Americus. 

They  were  walking  along  a  dark  street  up  which 
Pauline  and  Dan  had  lately  walked. 

Snagsie  caressed,  between  thumb  and  forefinger, 
the  lobe  of  one  of  his  outstanding  ears,  a  lifelong 
habit,  and  smiled  astutely. 

"  Ain't  so  sure  of  that,"  he  answered.     "  Course 


n6      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

it  ain't  like  Harrisburg:  that's  a  city,  that  is.  But 
you  fellows  can't  be  so  dead  slow  that  you  can't  pick 
nothin'  up  here.  I  never  starved  to  death  in  this 
place." 

Curiosity  was  a  passion  that  Snagsie  had  a  talent 
for  exciting.  Nevertheless,  Dan  had  learned  that, 
in  his  character  of  college  student,  it  ill  became  him 
to  be  less  of  a  roue  than  somebody  that  had  never 
had  the  advantages  of  the  higher  education;  so  he 
bethought  himself  to  receive  his  friend's  words  with 
a  smile  and  an  answer  that  implied  a  lie. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  with  elaborate  untruth,  "  when  a 
man  gets  into  Doncaster  every  day,  winters,  the  way 
I'm  doing,  he  sees  the  girls  once  in  a  while;  but  in 
Americus  people  catch  on  to  you  too  soon,  and  the 
women  all  talk  too  much." 

"  Aw,"  responded  Snagsie,  "  that's  because  you  fel- 
lows don't  go  at  it  right.  You  want  to  learn  how 
to  manage  women,  you  do.  I  ain't  been  back 
here  a  week  yet,  and  I've  got  hold  of  a  nice  little 
chippy." 

"  Who  is  she?  "  Dan  enviously  inquired. 

"  Irma  Smith.    She  works  for  the  Doreamuses." 

"  Irma  Smith?  "  said  Dan.  His  ideals  were  above 
servants. 

"  Put  you  next,  if  you  want  to,"  said  Snagsie,  as 
one  so  bountifully  dowered  that  he  can  afford  to  be 
generous. 

Dan  found  himself  suddenly  hesitating.  He  could 
not  understand  his  hesitation  and  he  resolved  to  con-, 
quer  it,  ideals  or  no,  before  it  could  be  so  much  as 
detected  by  the  enlightened  Snagsie. 

"  I  don't  mind,"  he  said  carelessly. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      117 

§  3.  So,  in  the  alley  behind  the  Doreamus  house, 
Dan  met  Irma. 

She  was  a  soft  and  pliant  girl,  with  a  soft  and 
pliant  mind  and  a  large  face.  Her  lips  were  full  and 
her  eyes  bovine;  her  hands  rough  from  much  im- 
mersion in  dish-water,  and  the  apron  that  she  wore 
on  that  first  evening  was  spotted  from  the  kitchen. 
But  she  had  a  docile,  clinging  quality  not  without 
its  charm  to  the  untrained  and  the  unexacting.  More- 
over, she  was  round  and  warm  and  had  reached,  too 
early,  the  point  of  highest  physical  development,  the 
delicate  moment  between  that  when  the  eternal 
sculptor  lays  down  his  mallet  from  the  completed 
statue  and  that  when  his  eternal  enemy  begins  the 
insidious  process  of  decay.  She  spoke  little,  and  Dan 
spoke  less. 

On  the  next  evening,  Snagsie  left  them  early. 
When,  a  few  days  later,  he  went  away  from  Americus 
for  another  position  with  his  former  employers,  this 
time  in  Trenton,  the  Doreamus  maid-of-all-work  and 
the  son  of  Sarah  Barnes  found  themselves — not  well 
acquainted,  for  they  could  never  be  that — but  as 
nearly  well  acquainted  as  they  could  be. 

The  thing  was  at  last  upon  Dan ;  the  thing  that  he 
had  never  been  instructed  about  and  had,  therefore, 
so  much  considered  and  now  both  wanted  and 
dreaded.  He  had  a  hundred  terrors,  not  the  least 
of  which  was  the  possible  betrayal  of  his  ignorance, 
and  a  hundred  desires  of  which  the  greatest  was  the 
one  desire  tha,t  had  been  fed  by  the  silences  of  his 
education  and  fattened  on  the  neglects  of  his  natural 
teachers.  There  was  none  to  tell  him  now,  none  so 
much  as  to  explain  that  these  faults  of  training  were 


n8      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  faults  of  a  system  based  upon  property  and  upon 
woman  as  the  insurance  of  property's  descent  from 
father  to  son;  none  to  point  out  that  he  and  the 
kitchen-slave,  who  was  but  groping  for  some  oasis 
of  pleasure  in  a  desert  of  drudgery,  were,  along  with 
all  their  kind,  the  puppets  of  the  system  that  their 
kind  had  fashioned. 

Dan  had  his  flashes  of  revolt,  but  he  felt  that  he 
stood  committed.  He  was  ashamed  of  shame. 

The  girl's  employers  were  not  at  home  on  the  first 
portentous  evening  when  Dan  and  Irma  sat  alone 
under  a  wide-limbed  black  oak  in  the  backyard.  He 
took  her  passive  hand  and  wished  that  it  were  not 
passive. 

"  Irma !  "  he  whispered.     "  Irma !  " 

He  put  his  arms  about  her  and  raised  his  lips  to 
kiss  hers. 

Irma  bent  her  head  to  his.    She  purred. 

§  4.  As  he  walked  home  that  night  under  the 
stars,  the  boy's  first  feeling  was  one  of  pride.  He 
said  that  he  had  at  last  wrested  the  Secret,  achieved 
maturity,  become  a  man  among  men.  But  beneath 
this  there  was  a  growing  sense  of  loss.  That  sense 
he  never  wholly  comprehended,  yet  years  passed  be- 
fore it  wholly  left  him.  The  hurts  that  had  come 
*  with  the  termination  of  the  affair  with  Pauline  were 
not  healed.  An  ideal,  always  shadowy,  but  once 
compellingly  potential,  had  died  within  him. 

§  5.  Yet  the  thing  went  on.  It  went  on  until  one 
evening  when  Irma  met  him  with  tears  in  her  big, 
frightened  eyes  and  spoke  a  sentence  that  it  had  never 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       119 

occurred  to  him  she  might  some  day  have  to  utter. 

"It's  not  so!  "he  cried. 

His  head  swam. 

"I  ain't  certain,"  she  sobbed;  "but  it  looks  like 
it." 

He  seized  her  wrists. 

'  You  must  be  mistaken !  "  he  declared.  "  You 
must  be !  "  He  felt  physically  sick. 

"  I  don't  believe  I  am,"  she  wailed.  "  An',  oh,  I 
don't  know  what  to  do !  I  don't  know  what  to  do !  " 

He  was  sure  it  could  not  be.  He  felt  that,  be- 
cause it  was  so  unjust,  it  could  not  be. 

"  Think !  "  he  commanded.    "  Count !  " 

"  I  have,"  said  Irma.  "  I  have — an'  I  don't  know 
what  to  do!  I  don't  know  what  to  do !  "  , 

That  horrid  iteration  stung  him.  Why  did  she 
not  know  what  to  do?  Why  had  she  ever  allowed 
this  to  occur?  He  hated  her.  How  he  hated  her! 
He  did  not  know  what  to  do.  He  did  not  know 
where  to  inquire.  Snagsie  was  in  Trenton,  and  Dan 
dared  not  write.  There  was  nobody  else.  He  dared 
not  appeal  to  the  friends  authorized  by  his  family. 
He  and  this  weak  girl  to  whom  he  now  found  him- 
self unendurably  chained:  they  were  as  much  alone 
as  if  they  were  both  clinging  to  a  dancing  spar  in 
a  tempest  of  mid-ocean. 

They  hesitated;  they  procrastinated;  they  let  the 
days  pass  in  fevered  hopes  and  the  nights  in  chilly 
doubt.  Time  is  the  bondman  of  the  happy,  but  the 
slaver  of  the  unfortunate.  It  whipped  them  for- 
ward. We  wrll  wait  till  such  a  day,  they  said,  and 

then They  did  not  know  what  they  would  do 

then.  But  they  waited  for  the  day.  It  came  and 


120      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

passed  and  neither  then  nor  in  the  days  of  hope  de- 
layed that  hung  upon  its  heels  did  what  they  prayed 
for  happen.  Nothing  happened.  And  all  the  while, 
out  of  the  months  ahead  of  them,  their  veiled  destiny, 
to  meet  their  faltering  approach,  implacably  ad- 
vanced. 

At  last,  on  the  eve  of  the  reopening  of  college, 
even  Dan  knew  that,  whatever  was  to  happen,  his 
father,  terrible  as  the  ordeal  would  prove,  must  be 
told.  He  would  throw  himself  upon  the  mercy  of  the 
court.  Then  came  the  sense  of  his  duty.  It  came 
to  him  so  strangely  that  it  amounted  to  a  blow.  For 
a  time  it  stunned  him,  so  that  he  could  not  do  what 
he  now  realized  he  must  do. 

On  a  morning  in  the  store,  where  he  went  through 
his  work  as  a  frightened  child  lives  through  a  bad 
dream,  he  understood  that  this  was  more  than  an 
appeal  for  mercy;  more  than  the  performance  of 
duty;  that  it  was  something  which  would,  sooner  or 
later  and  in  defiance  of  his  will,  certainly  occur. 

Several  times  he  started  toward  his  father's  office, 
and  several  times  turned  back.  There  struck  him,  as 
if  to  reenforce  his  terrors  for  himself,  a  sharp  appre- 
ciation of  the  ruthless  extent  to  which  retribution  was 
carried  in  this  world.  He,  Dan,  had  offended  against 
the  conventional  code,  and  here,  at  the  very  start  of 
the  evil,  not  only  was  he  to  suffer,  and  Irma,  but  an- 
other wholly  innocent  soul. 

Then,  quickly,  he  found  himself  in  the  little,  litho- 
graph-hung office  and  heard  his  stiffened  tongue  tell- 
ing, in  a  few  crude  sentences,  the  truth.  He  saw  the 
man's  rugged  face  grow  old  as  the  words  were  ut- 
tered. He  saw  anger  flash  and  disappear.  He  saw 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       121 

his  father's  hopes  for  him,  the  pride  and  the  plans, 
totter.  He  saw  the  stiff  upper  lip  loosen  and  the  jaw 
move  as  if  in  prayer.  He  saw  tears  come  into  the 
hazel  eyes:  the  difficult  tears  of  the  middle-aged. 
And  he  saw  Love  there,  writhing  like  a  bruised  worm, 
but  alive. 

Somehow  Tom  Barnes  was  speaking: 

" .  .  .  '  mustn't  know  this.  We  must  keep  it  from 
her.  I  won't  tell  your  mother,  Dan,"  said  Old  Tom. 


VIII 

DAN  was  to  go  to  New  York.  He  was  to  be 
given  work  there  and  to  live  entirely  upon  his 
own  earnings. 

This  decision,  emerging  from  the  cloud  that  then 
enveloped  him,  as  it  were  the  decree  of  a  deity  gov- 
erning his  universe  from  beyond  the  universal  limits, 
is  all  that  Dan  now  recalls  of  the  three  or  four  days 
following  his  confession  to  his  father.  And  the  de- 
cision came  at  the  end  of  those  .three  or  four 
days. 

During  the  period  immediately  preceding,  the  boy 
seemed  to  himself  to  be  in  a  state  of  suspended  ani- 
mation. He  seemed  to  be  holding  his  breath,  await- 
ing the  judgment  that  was  to  restore  him  to  life  or 
condemn  him  to  death.  He  was  conscious  of  no  sen- 
sation save  the  sensation  of  dread.  He  neither  re- 
membered nor  reasoned,  neither  thought  nor  rebelled. 
He  had  staggered  too  long  alone  under  the  weight  of 
his  guilt.  At  last,  overcome,  he  had  fallen  before  his 
father;  had  placed  his  burden  upon  his  father's  knees. 
Dan  forgot  that  he  had  once  considered  his  father 
old-fashioned:  he  now  thought  of  him  as  the  one 
power  existent.  Exhausted,  the  lad  was  waiting  what- 
ever disposal  should  be  made  of  his  sin  and  himself 
by  the  parent  that  had  resumed  omnipotence. 

And  that  disposal  took  the  form  of  a  commanded 
flight. 

122 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       123 

Somewhere,  out  of  the  gray  mist  about  Dan,  came 
Old  Tom,  a  trembling  sheet  of  letter-paper  in  his 
crooked  fingers. 

"  I've  written  to  Richardson,"  said  Old  Tom. 
"  He's  in  New  York  now.  He's  retired.  But  he 
says  he  can  get  you  a  job  with  his  brokers."  The 
man's  voice  was  dull  and  dry.  "  I'll  take  you  over. 
Perhaps  it's  a  good  thing — a  good  thing.  Perhaps 
you  can  learn  finance  there.  That's  what  I'm  telling 
your  mother,  anyhow.  Perhaps,  then,  after  a 

while If  this  blows  over,  perhaps  you  can  come 

back  then  an'  help  in  the  store." 

He  did  not  say : 

"  You  have  broken  the  laws  of  God  and  man;  you 
have  disgraced  your  family ;  you  are  a  living  reproach 
to  your  parents,  your  church,  your  town" 

He  did  not  say: 

"  You  have  ruined  a  young  girl  and  wrecked  an- 
other soul  while  casting  away  your  own." 

He  did  not  say: 

"  I  have  worked  and  schemed  and  planned  for  you 
by  day  and  by  night;  I  have  hoped  and  prayed  for 
you;  and  you,  after  thrusting  your  hand  into  the  fire 
that  I  have  Always  hated  and  avoided,  have  set  a 
torch  to  the  structure  that  I  have  given  all  my  life  to 
build." 

He  did  not  weep  or  upbraid.  He  did  not  even 
explain. 

Dan  wished  with  his  whole  heart  that  his  father 
would  say  and  do  these  things.  Darkly  he  under- 
stood that  the  man's  restraint  was  governed  by  love, 
that  the  man's  silence  was  the  silence  of  a  great 
pride  broken.  Keenly  he  felt  that  such  restraint  and 


i24      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

silence  were  almost  too  much  to  be  borne  by  either 
father  or  son. 


§  2.  Once  more  alone,  however,  something  of 
all  that  Dan  had  been  trained  to  be  reasserted  it- 
self. 

He  was  to  leave  home.  Not  as  he  had  designed. 
Not  as  he  had  been  taught  to  expect.  But  stealthily, 
hurriedly,  disgracefully.  Under  his  father's  direc- 
tion, he  was  to  play  a  lie. 

He  did  not  want  to  leave  home.  He  had  hoped  for 
the  City;  but  now  he  was  horrified  by  it.  His  dream 
had  become  an  apprehension.  He  realized  that  all 
his  bringing-up,  which  had  shaped  him  to  regard 
Americus  as  the  best  place  in  the  world,  had  made 
him  love  his  home ;  that  the  very  fields  and  hills  sur- 
rounding it  were  his  friends  and  familiars.  Here  he 
was  known;  he  was  the  son  of  a  known  and  consid- 
ered man.  But  Out  There,  in  the  city,  he  would  be 
alone,  unknown  and  unconsidered,  even  inconsider- 
able. The  bed  in  which  he  had  slept  for  so  many 
years;  the  kindly,  homely  house  of  which  each  corner 
held  its  dear  associations;  the  fond,  commonplace 
streets,  the  unfinished  college  course  at  Doncaster; 
the  accustomed  faces,  with  not  one  stranger  in  their 
company;  his  mother:  he  was  to  leave  these  to  go 
among  alien  things  that  belonged  to  other  people's 
lives  and  memories. 

And  Irma? 

At  the  recurring  thought  of  her,  he  shuddered.  In 
her  embodied  he  saw  the  evil  force,  in  her  he  saw 
the  wicked  angel  that  was  driving  him  from  his  Gar- 
den. She  represented  that  which  he  had  been  for- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       125 

bidden  to  do  and  had  done.  More  concretely,  she 
represented  discovery,  exposure.  Had  he  not  been 
caught,  all  had  been  well ;  but  for  her,  what  had  hap- 
pened would  not  have  happened.  He  had  been 
trained  to  seek  her  fervently  and  secretly;  but  he 
thought  that  he  had  been  trained  to  shun  her.  Ac- 
tion and  reaction  are  opposite  and  equal.  Because, 
though  unsuspecting,  his  parents  had  with  such  covert 
force  propelled  him  toward  Irma,  Dan  now  recoiled 
from  her  as  from  the  independent,  free-willed  agent 
of  his  destruction.  What  people  would  say  and  what 
was  to  be  done  with  the  girl :  this  his  revealed  inex- 
perience and  weakness,  restoring  confidence  in  the  pa- 
ternal knowledge  and  might,  left  to  his  father,  who 
thought  so  heavily  of  it.  Dan's  education  had  not 
been  such  as  to  impose  upon  him,  in  these  circum- 
stances, a  sense  of  duty  to  the  girl:  he  hated  her. 
But  he  also  feared  her.  He  did  not  want  to  run 
away  from  home;  he  wanted  to  run  away  from 
Irma. 

§  3.  So  the  mother  that  was  not  told  "  went  over  " 
her  son's  clothes  and  sewed  and  darned  and  cleaned 
them  and  packed  them,  with  a  few  tears  that  nobody 
saw,  into  the  old  Saratoga  trunk  that  had  gone  on 
her  wedding-journey  to  Niagara  Falls.  She  thought 
of  a  hot-water  bottle  and  many  other  things  that  he 
might  need,  and  secretly  provided  them.  So,  too,  un- 
known and  unknowing,  she  watched  Dan  when  none 
was  aware  that  she  was  watching  and  questioned  him 
with  her  eyes  when  he  did  not  guess  that  she  was  ques- 
tioning. And  so,  finally,  the  father  holding  his 
tongue  as  men  will  and  the  mother  keeping  silence 


126      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

as  women  must,  the  gray  morning  of  departure  ar- 
rived. 

All  three  pretended  to  eat  of  the  hurried  break- 
fast that  was  like  the  breakfast  in  the  condemned  cells 
before  the  heavy  feet  of  the  chaplain  and  the  sheriff 
shuffle  on  the  iron  floor  outside.  The  wagon  from 
the  Adams  Hotel  rattled  up  to  the  door,  and  the 
negro  porter  with  the  brass  label  on  his  cap,  having 
managed  to  shoulder  the  trunk  that  would  not  be 
strapped  until  Tom  and  Dan  sat  upon  the  lid,  stag- 
gered out  with  it. 

"  Check  through  to  New  York,  Mr.  Dan?"  in- 
quired the  porter. 

And  Dan  nodded. 

"  Dan  has  been  offered  an  excellent  position  in 
New  York,"  Old  Tom  explained  to  the  porter.  "  I'm 
going  over  with  him — for  the  day.  Yes,  sir:  an  ex- 
cellent position." 

"  I  done  hear  that  jes'  las'  night,"  said  the  negro. 
"  Cert'nly  is  right  fine  fo'  the  young  man,  Mr.  Barnes. 
Hope  he'll  like  it." 

The  porter  dumped  the  trunk  into  his  wagon  with 
a  mighty  crash.  He  slammed  the  back-board  and 
secured  it  with  a  noisy  chain,  and  he  drove  away, 
leaving  Dan  and  Dan's  mother  in  the  dark  hall,  while 
Old  Tom  became  vastly  interested  in  meteorological 
investigations  conducted  from  the  curb. 

"  Ten  minutes  before  train-time!  "  he  called  over 
his  shoulder,  without  turning  his  broad  head. 

Dan  took  his  hat  from  the  tall  rack. 

"  I  guess  I'd  better  be  starting,"  he  said. 

His  mother  was  standing  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs, 
one  large  hand  resting  on  the  newel-post. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       127 

"  Yes,"  she  answered;  "  I  guess  you'd  better  start, 
Dan." 

Dan  twirled  his  hat  between  his  fingers.    He  looked 
at  the  hat. 

"  You  have  your  overshoes?  "  asked  his  mother. 

"Yes'm.    Have  them  on." 

There  was  a  pause. 

"  Where's  your  umbrella?"  asked  Mrs.  Barnes. 
She  was  looking  out  of  the  open  doorway. 

"  Father's  got  that,"  said  Dan. 

"  Don't  lose  it." 

"  No,  mother." 

"  And  don't  forget  to  put  on  your  flannels  the  first 
of  October,  no  matter  if  it  is  warm." 

"  No,  mother." 

Old  Tom's  voice  sounded  from  the  pavement. 

"  Better  hurry!  "  he  warned. 

"  All  right !  "  called  Dan.     "  I'm  coming!  " 

The  son  raised  his  eyes  from  his  hat.  He  saw 
that  his  mother's  eyes,  though  still  blue,  were  fading. 
He  seemed  to  see  that  her  figure  was  slighter  than  it 
used  to  be  and  that  her  hair  was  grayer.  He  could 
not  trust  himself  to  try  to  see  more. 

"  Maybe  I'll  be  back  for  Thanksgiving,"  he  said. 
He  put  his  arms  about  her  awkwardly  and  lowered  his 
face,  the  eyes  closed.  "  Good— good-by,  mother," 
he  added. 

Her  frail  arms  wrapped  tight  around  his  neck. 
She  whispered  in  his  ear: 

"  Good-by.  Don't  forget  to  write  once  a  week. 
Good-by.  Be — be  good,  Danny.  Good-by — my  little 
boy." 


128       THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

She  had  meant  to  say  so  much,  and  now  she  could 
say  no  more  than  this! 

S~\ 

§  4.-  Dan  did  not  look  back.  He  knew  that  she 
was  watching  and  trying  to  smile,  and  upon  that 
brave  attempt  he  felt  that  he  must  not  look.  He  set 
his  own  lips.  At  the  station  he  grinned  stiffly  as  the 
porter  produced  the  trunk-check  and  again  wished  him 
luck.  He  grinned  as  he  shook  hands  with  several  of 
the  townspeople  that  were  there  to  meet  friends  for- 
tunate enough  to  be  coming  to  Americus.  And  once 
seated  in  the  smoking-car,  he  accepted  without  com- 
ment the  newspaper  that  his  father,  out  of  half  a 
dozen  just  purchased,  offered  him. 

The  station  slipped  from  view.  The  car  glided 
past  the  foot  of  Elm  Avenue  on  which,  several  blocks 
away,  the  Barnes  store  stood.  The  back  fences  of 
house-yards  that  Danny  knew  by  heart  danced  across 
the  pane.  The  river  in  which  he  had  learned  to  swim  ; 
the  island  from  which  he  had,  with  Judith,  watched 
the  moonlight  on  the  water;  the  hills  that  he  had 
climbed:  all  these  whirled  by,  each  faster  than  the 
last.  The  train  swung  into  the  railway  "  yard," 
turned  abruptly  into  strange  country,  and  began  to  race 
eastward  as  if  it  were  glad  to  hurry  him  from  home. 

It  was  a  silent  ride.  Old  Tom,  older  than  ever 
now,^sat,  for  the  most  part,  trying  to  appear  en- 
grossed in  the  reading  of  his  newspapers.  Young 
Dan  tried,  for  the  most  part,  to  present  a  similar 
appearance.  Each  knew  a  little  of  what  was  in  the 
other's  mind,  but  only  at  long  intervals  did  either 
venture  a  remark,  and  then  speech  dealt  with  indif- 
ferent matters. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       129 

When  they  left  their  train  in  the  tunnel-like  mouth 
of  the  Jersey  City  car-shed,  they  joined  a  crowding 
stream  of  intent  and  hastening  persons.  Dan  had 
difficulty  in  keeping  close  to  his  father,  who  now 
seemed  the  sole  living  thing  to  connect  the  boy  with 
all  that  he  cared  for  in  the  world. 

"  We'll  go  for'ard  on  the  ferryboat,"  said  Old 
Tom.  '*  Then  you  can  get  a  good  view  of  the  city." 

No  view  in  all  his  life  thereafter  quite  so  ap- 
palled Dan.  The  ferry  was  not  a  river,  but  a  sea, 
tossing,  greedy,  malign.  He  had  never  before  real- 
ized that  water  could  be  crowded :  this  water  was  as 
full  of  jostling  craft  as  the  market-house  of  Americus 
was  full  of  people  on  market-day.  Tugs  snorted ;  flat- 
boats  unnaturally  bore  railroad  coal-cars  with  the 
greasy  waves  breaking  about  the  iron  wheels;  huge- 
funneled  ocean  steamships  crawled  up  stream  and 
down;  and  under  their  bows,  across  their  course, 
lurched  other  ferryboats  so  black  with  passengers  that 
Dan  was  sure  the  weight  must  soon  sink  them.  The 
air  was  strangely  salt  and,  even  at  that  time  of  year, 
chill. 

The  boy  raised  his  eyes  and  shuddered.  Ahead 
was  a  tangle  of  shipping,  restlessly  busy,  hopelessly 
involved,  and  above  this  rose,  black  and  white,  peaks 
and  domes  and  great  cliffs  spotted  with  windows. 
Dan  felt  the  oppressive  presence  there  of  countless 
lives  that  did  not  reck  of  his,  the  muddle  of  innumera- 
ble activities  among  which  his  own  activities  must 
soon  be  lost  even  from  himself.  He  thought  of  those 
jagged  cliffs  as  the  spotted  teeth  in  the  lower  jaw  of 
some  enormous  monster  whose  upper  jaw  was  beyond 
the  reach  of  vision,  and  down  whose  throat  this 


130      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

stream  of  human  beings  was  drawn,  day  and  night, 
night  and  day  without  end. 

The  boat  that  bore  Old  Tom  and  Dan  came  into 
its  slip  with  a  great  creaking  and  splashing,  the  cry- 
ing of  many  ropes  and  the  clank  of  much  metal.  The 
intent  passengers  crowded  ahead;  the  prow-gates  col- 
lapsed; there  was  a  tremendous  rush  forward.  Dan 
felt  his  feet  hurried  over  the  level  deck  and  then 
impeded  by  sudden  contact  with  a  rising  platform. 
He  gained  the  noisy  street  and,  wanting  to  cling  to 
his  father's  arm,  but  ashamed  to  do  so,  turned 
abruptly  to  the  left. 

§  5.  They  were  first  to  call  at  Mr.  Richardson's, 
and  to  do  this  they  had  to  cross  the  ferry  at  another 
angle  and  take  another  train.  They  rode  for  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour  through  ugly  lowlands  made 
more  ugly  by  the  encroachments  of  factories  and 
mills,  passed  several  sooty  manufacturing  suburbs, 
came  into  a  region  of  porches  and  stucco,  and  at 
length,  after  leaving  the  train  and  suffering  a  drive 
in  a  ramshackle  cab,  turned  into  a  curving  gravel 
road  among  well-kept  lawns,  and  dismounted  before 
the  home  of  the  retired  merchant. 

The  Richardson  house  was  large  and  respectable 
and  gloomy,  like  the  man  that  lived  in  it.  Indeed, 
nobody  could  well  be  said  to  live  in  it  at  all;  and 
the  most  truthful  praise  that  could  be  bestowed  upon 
it  was  that  it  would  be  an  imposing  place  from  which 
to  be  buried.  It  was  built  of  some  somber  stone;  it 
was  square  and  solid,  with  a  stunted  mansard.  In 
a  word,  it  was  of  the  1880  to  1890  decade. 

Dan  caught  sight  of  an  erect,  angular  woman, 

•j 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      131 

who,  going  out,  passed  him  and  his  father  as  they 
ascended  the  steps  after  a  quarrel  over  the  cabman's 
charges.  She  gave  them  a  piercing  glance  from  be- 
hind her  brown  veil  and  then,  as  they  returned  the 
glance,  seemed  quickly  to  remember  that  an  interest 
in  strangers  was  beneath  her  position  and  looked  as 
quickly  away,  pointed  chin  in  air. 

"  That  must  be  Mrs.  Richardson,"  whispered  Old 
Tom  reverently  (he  had  become  subdued  immedi- 
ately upon  issuing  from  his  battle  with  the  cabman), 
and  put  out  a  knotted  hand  to  ring  the  bell. 

§  6.  Mr.  Edward  Quimby  Richardson,  the  junior 
of  Tom  Barnes,  was  a  large  man  with  a  protruding 
white  waistcoat  and  a  red  carnation  in  the  lapel  of  his 
black  frock-coat.  His  wide  face,  at  once  pompous 
and  serene,  was  clean-shaven  except  for  little  tufts  of 
hair  descending  to  the  corners  of  his  jawbone  between 
either  ear  and  eye  and  giving  his  prominent  features 
a  general  resemblance  to  those  of  Louis  Phillipe.  He 
had  immaculate  hands,  a  round  and  solemn  eye,  and 
a  voice  carefully  cultivated  to  convey  the  tone  of  one 
accustomed  to  command. 

"Glad  to  see  you,  Barnes,"  he  said  as  he  entered 
the  stiff  and  shady  parlor.  u  And  this  is  your  son? 
Glad  to  know  you.  Only  sorry  I  cannot  welcome  you 
in  Philadelphia  instead  of  here;  but  an  old  man  must 
have  his  leisure,  you  know,  and  I  tell  Mrs.  Richardson 
that  this  is  a  good  place  to  take  it." 

He  had  had  the  misfortune  to  be  born  in  Phila- 
delphia and  he  continued  the  fault  of  being  proud  of 
it.  All  his  ancestors  had  been  born  in  Philadelphia, 
and,  simply  because  they  had  all  been  born  there, 
- 


132      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Philadelphia  was  proud  of  them.  In  that  city,  Mr. 
Richardson  had  increased  his  fortune,  where  his  an- 
cestors had  spent  most  of  theirs.  While  there,  like 
his  ancestors,  he  would  not  vote  at  all,  because  he 
considered  voting  to  be  "  playing  politics,"  and  all 
politics  to  be  vulgar.  He  had  contented  himself,  for 
his  part,  to  allow  Philadelphia  to  be  conducted  by 
persons  whom  it  would  not  do  to  know;  had  been 
content,  in  return,  to  take  without  question  the  ques- 
tionable business-favors  of  these  persons,  as  the  lord 
of  a  Sussex  manor  receives,  through  an  agent,  the 
tribute-money  of  his  hereditary  tenants.  The  secret 
sorrow  of  Mr.  Richardson's  life  was  that,  when  his 
fortune  was  complete,  his  New  England  wife,  unable 
to  secure  his  migration  to  Boston,  had  refused  to  com- 
promise on  any  terms  save  a  residence  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  New  York.  For  the  rest,  his  foibles  were 
of  the  sort  that  tickled  him  and  hurt  nobody.  He 
collected  stock  phrases  and  spoke  in  little  else,  and, 
being  a  man  with  a  good  opinion  of  his  intellect,  al- 
ways talked  as  if  his  hearers  had  no  intellect  at  all. 

Tom  Barnes  murmured  his  admiration  of  the  place 
in  which  Mr.  Richardson  had  elected  to  enjoy  his 
leisure.  Dan,  both  sick  at  heart  and  embarrassed, 
shuffled  his  feet  on  a  Persian  rug  and  said  nothing. 
The  talk  laboriously  wriggled  through  the  advan- 
tages of  trade  in  the  progressive  city  of  Philadelphia, 
back  to  the  days  of  the  War  of  the  Rebellion ;  and  so, 
since  a  direct  advance  upon  any  matter  in  hand  is  un- 
dignified and  un-Philadelphian,  reached  at  last,  by  the 
correct  route,  the  question  of  Old  Tom's  visit. 

"  Having  retired,'*  said  Mr.  Richardson  largely, 
"  your  letter  fell  upon  me  with  a  dull  thud." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       133 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Old  Tom,  not  knowing  what  else 
to  say. 

"  However,"  pursued  Mr.  Richardson,  "  I  have 
done  my  best,  and  angels  can  do  no  more,  can  they?  " 

He  smiled  at  Tom  out  of  his  round  eyes. 

"  I'm  sure  we're  very  much  obliged  to  you,"  replied 
Old  Tom :  "  very."  He  gave  his  son  a  glance  that 
commanded  the  lad  to  evince  gratitude.  "  Aren't 
we,  Dan'l?  "  he  demanded. 

Dan  started  and  cleared  his  throat. 

"  Very,"  he  lugubriously  assented. 

"  Not  at  all,"  replied  Mr.  Richardson,  with  uncon- 
vincing deprecation.  "  I  am  still  a  man  of  affairs,  I 
hope.  I  got  your  letter.  I  said  to  myself:  '  I  must 
do  what  I  can  to  favor  an  old  comrade.'  Very  well. 
No  sooner  said  than  done.  I  went  to  my  brokers  and 
I  secured  this  position  for  our  young  friend  here." 

"  An'  good  it  was  of  you — good,"  said  Old  Tom. 

He  appealed  to  Dan  for  further  support,  but  Dan 
had  already  exhausted  his  capacity  for  approval. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Mr.  Richardson.  "  All  is 
not  gold  that  glitters,  is  it?  I  have  found  in  my  long 
career  that  all  is  not  gold  that  glitters.  Any  position 
is  what  the  incumbent  chooses  to  make  it.  Neverthe- 
less, I  must  say  that  I  have  of  course  selected  my 
own  brokers  with  exceeding  care  " — Mr.  Richardson 
was  one  of  those  who  always  manage  to  praise  them- 
selves when  they  praise  others — "  and  I  am  sure  that 
they  are  the  sterling  type  of  men:  rough  diamonds 
from  whom  an  employee  may  gather  a  true  knowl- 
edge of  finance.  I  may  even  add  that,  when  my  own 
son  (Harold  is  only  a  lad  now)  has  finished  college, 
I  propose  to  place  him,  for  a  time,  in  their  offices." 


i34      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

By  a  slight  inclination  of  his  head,  Mr.  Richard- 
son indicated  one  of  the  parlor's  French  windows 
through  which  a  bow-legged,  tow-headed  boy  could 
be  seen  on  the  lawn  engaged  in  amusing  himself  by 
pulling  the  tail  of  a  yelping  King  Charles  spaniel. 
The  boy  had  a  good-natured,  ruddy  face  and  ap- 
peared unconscious  of  the  fact  that  he  was  inflicting 
pain.  , 

While  the  placid  flow  of  Mr.  Richardson's  con- 
versation continued  along  its  obvious  course,  Dan 
continued  to  look  at  the  boy.  Mr.  Richardson,  Dan 
was  aware,  was  recommending  a  boarding-house 
"  kept  by  a  most  estimable  person."  He  was,  Dan 
knew,  dignifiedly  approaching  the  point  where  he 
would  offer  to  accompany  Tom  to  the  brokers'  offices. 
He  had,  Dan  at  last  apprehended,  reached  that 
point,  made  the  offer,  and  was  about  to  rise. 

Just  then  there  came  a  sound  of  uncertain  footsteps 
from  the  hall. 

"  Papa !  "  cried  a  baby  voice. 

1  Yes,  my  dear,"  answered  Mr.  Richardson.  "  In 
here,  my  dear." 

Dan  withdrew  his  gaze  from  the  red-cheeked  lad 
on  the  lawn  and  saw,  clutching  the  curtains  and  sway- 
ing in  the  doorway,  a  little  girl  not  more  than  two 
years  old.  She  had  pink  cheeks,  like  those  of  the 
boy  with  the  spaniel,  and  hair  the  color  of  wheat  in 
July,  and  blue  eyes. 

"Well,  well,  my  dear,"  asked  Mr.  Richardson; 
"  and  where  did  you  come  from?  " 

The  little  girl  hung  her  head.  She  put  her  right 
forefinger  between  her  lips. 

"  Your  daughter?  "  inquired  Old  Tom. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       135 

Mr.  Richardson  inclined  his  head. 

"  The  child  of  my  old  age,"  he  said,  though  he  was 
not  old. 

"  A  very  pretty  child,"  said  Old  Tom. 

Dan  said  nothing,  but,  though  he  did  not  like  chil- 
dren at  that  time,  he  agreed  with  his  father. 

"  She  is  pretty,"  Mr.  Richardson  readily  admitted, 
"  but  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  beauty  is  only 
skin-deep.  My  dear,"  he  continued  to  the  child,  "  I 
asked  you  a  question." 

The  little  girl  looked  up. 

"I  asked  you  where  you  had  come  from?"  in- 
sisted Mr.  Richardson. 

The  child  appealed  vigorously  to  her  memory. 

"  Nursery,"  she  at  length  replied. 
'  The  nursery?  "  said  her  father,  who,  in  common 
with  many  of  his  kind,  felt  the  necessity  of  trans- 
lating or  repeating  the  clearest  of  his  child's  words  for 
the  benefit  of  strangers.  "  That  is  where  you  should 
be  at  this  time  of  day;  but  since  you  are  here,  come 
in  like  a  little  lady  and  say  how-d'-do  to  Mr.  Barnes 
and  Mr.  Daniel  Barnes." 

Reluctant,  but  obedient,  the  child  toddled  slowly 
forward.  She  placed  her  chubby  hand  in  Old  Tom's 
big  palm  and  looked  up  at  him  with  expectant  eyes. 

"  Mr.  Barnes,"  said  Mr.  Richardson,  "  this  is  my 
daughter,  Lucile." 

Tom  nodded. 

"  Proud  to  know  you,  Miss  Lucile,"  he  said. 

Lucile,  warmed  by  this  reception,  turned  unsteadily 
to  Dan.  She  qffered  him  her  hand  of  her  own  accord. 

"  Up !  "  she  commanded,  and  tried  to  clamber  into 
his  lap.  .  .'».-; 


136      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

§  7.  On  the  lawn,  when  Mr.  Richardson  and  his 
guests  started  for  the  New  York  offices  of  O'Neill  & 
Silverstone,  Harold  was  still  playing  with  the  spaniel. 
As  Dan  passed,  the  boy  called : 

"Hi,  you!" 

Dan  turned,  blushing. 

"Yes?"  he  said. 

"  Can  you  stand  on  your  head?  "  asked  Harold. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Dan.  "  I  used  to.  It's  a 
long  time  since  I  tried." 

"  Well,  /  can,"  said  Harold. 

"  That's  good,"  Dan  answered. 

"  You  bet  it  is,"  said  Harold.  "  I  bet  you  a  nickel 
I  can  do  it  longer'n  you." 

§  8.  When  they  reentered  the  city  and  plunged 
again  into  the  terrible  and  wonderful  streets,  Dan's 
depression  deepened.  The  clang  and  clamor  became 
a  personal  horror.  Above  towered  buildings  so  high 
that  they  cast  over  the  thoroughfares  a  damp  and  con- 
tinuous twilight.  Pushcarts,  vans,  delivery  wagons, 
carriages  filled  the  narrow  channel  from  shore  to 
shore.  Between  these  dodged  pedestrians  in  immedi- 
ate bodily  peril;  and  up  and  down  each  pavement, 
at  such  a  speed  and  at  such  cross-purposes  that  col- 
lisions seemed  momentarily  imminent,  thronged  in- 
terminable armies  of  more  pedestrians,  each  individual 
different  from  the  rest,  each  swathed  like  a  mummy 
from  the  others  in  the  cerements  of  his  own  pressing 
concerns,  yet  all  alike  in  the  rapid  pace  of  their  feet 
and  the  tense  expression  of  their  faces. 

Mr.  Richardson  led  his  followers  into  a  steep  street, 
narrower  and  more  crowded  than  any  they  had  yet 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       137 

stemmed.  He  opened  a  ground-glass  swing-door  and 
passed  through  a  noisy  room  full  of  anxious  people 
looking  at  blackboards  on  which  pale  young  men  were 
scribbling  white  figures.  He  came  to  an  inner  office 
that  was  all  deep  red  and  dark  mahogany,  and  he 
sent  a  fat  boy  in  a  blue  uniform  for  Mr.  O'Neill. 

Mr.  O'Neill  responded  with  a  promptitude  that 
was  a  tribute  to  Mr.  Richardson's  importance.  He 
was  small,  had  close-cropped  sandy  hair,  sharp  eyes, 
a  smooth  face,  and  a  protruding  under  jaw. 

u  Good-morning,  good-morning,  good-morning," 
he  said;  and  Dan  reflected  that  it  was  already  one 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 

"  Good-morning,  Mr.  O'Neill,"  said  Mr.  Rich- 
ardson. "  This  is  my  old  army-comrade,  Mr.  Barnes, 
and  his  son,  about  whom  I  spoke  to  you  the  other 
day." 

O'Neill  came  forward.  Still  a  young  man,  he  did 
not  walk,  but  hopped;  he  cocked  his  little  head  as 
a  bird  does  and  seemed  eternally  whistling,  to  him- 
self, the  tunes  to  which  he  was  eternally  dancing. 

"  Yes,  yes,  yes,"  said  O'Neill,  and  shook  hands  all 
around.  "  Sit  down,  gentlemen,  do." 

"  Thank  you,"  replied  Mr.  Richardson,  abandon- 
ing, in  the  presence  of  Finance,  something  of  his 
habitual  Fabian  methods,  "  We  are  aware  that  you 
are  a  busy  man.  We  merely  wanted  you  to  meet 
Master  Daniel  and  to  say  when  you  were  ready  to 
have  him  start  work." 

Mr.  O'Neill  smiled,  cocked  his  head,  and  whistled 
to  himself.  -, 

"  Eight  o'clock  to-morrow  morning,"  he  answered. 
"  Office  opens  for  customers  at  nine." 


i38      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Good,"  agreed  Mr.  Richardson;  "  very  good  in- 
deed. I  have  found,  in  the  long  course  of  my  career, 
that  there  is  no  time  like  the  present." 

O'Neill's  eyes  twinkled. 

"  Excellent,"  he  chirped. 

"  About  the  boy's  job,"  began  Old  Tom,  "  I  guess 
you  can  tell  him " 

"  Best  way  to  learn  a  job  is  to  tackle  it,"  inter- 
rupted O'Neill.  "  He'll  get  on  in  no  time." 

"  What'll  you  start  him  at?  "  asked  Tom. 

"  Seven  dollars.     In  six  months,  ten." 

Mr.  Richardson  bowed.  Everybody  bowed,  and 
Mr.  Richardson  laid  his  immaculate  hand  on  Dan's 
shrinking  shoulder. 

"  One  piece  of  advice,  my  dear  young,  man,"  he 
said:  "Don't  play  the  market."  He  spoke  as  if 
seven  dollars  a  week  would  leave  a  wide  margin  for 
"  margins."  "  When  you  do  buy,  buy  for  investment. 
It  is  generally  certain  that  if  you  put  your  fingers  in 
the  fire,  you  will  burn  them." 

"  True,"  remarked  O'Neill,  visibly  impressed  by 
this  oracular  utterance.  "  If  you  put  your  fingers  in 
the  fire,  you  will  burn  them.  I  believe  that  is  true, 


sir." 


Dan  did  not  understand  all  this,  but  he  saw  his 
father  assenting,  and  so,  swallowing  the  lump  that 
was  in  his  throat,  he  assented,  too. 

Then  O'Neill  took  them  into  another  room,  the 
precise  counterpart  of  that  in  which  he  had  met  them. 
There  he  introduced  them  to  his  partner,  Mr.  Clar- 
ence Silverstone,  a  man  of  about  O'NeilPs  age,  who 
had  a  dark,  handsome,  regular  face,  who  spoke,  with 
a  multiplicity  of  little  nervous  gestures,  a  slow  but 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      139 

unaccented  English  and  against  whom  Dan  at  once 
conceived  an  unreasoned  dislike.  With  him  father 
and  son  left  Mr.  Richardson  in  business  conference. 

Tom  and  Dan  went  into  the  narrow  street,  the  boy 
reflecting  how  lost  even  his  big  father  seemed  in  this 
great  town  and  how  unimportant  before  its  important 
citizens.  They  lunched  at  a  corner  lunch-room  with 
long,  uncovered  tables,  banging  dishes,  and  chattering 
waitresses,  and,  after  a  far  ride  in  the  street  cars,  for 
Dan  noticed  that  Tom  avoided  the  rushing  elevated 
roads,  they  came  to  a  part  of  the  city  where  all  the 
houses  were  exactly  alike  and  all  had  an  air  of  having 
seen  more  prosperous  days  and  of  sulking  over  their 
fallen  estate. 

Old  Tom  had  some  trouble  in  finding  the  par- 
ticular street  and  the  particular  boarding-house  that 
Mr.  Richardson  had  recommended.  When  he  did 
find  the  house,  the  door  opened  upon  a  lean  woman 
and  the  smell  of  fried  lard. 

"  I  want  to  rent  a  room  for  my  boy,"  said  Tom. 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  the  landlady,  who  was  sallow  and 
looked  tired  and  unhappy.  "  How  much?  " 

"  What  have  you  got?  "  asked  Tom. 

§  9.  In  the  end,  they  secured  a  hall  bedroom  in 
the  rear  of  the  house,  three  flights  from  the  ground 
floor.  The  room  was  eight  feet  broad  and  ten  long 
and,  being  the  thinly  partitioned  fraction  of  a  large 
apartment,  possessed  at  least  the  virtue  of  a  ceiling 
high  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  other  dimensions. 
The  window  looked  upon  the  rear  of  more  boarding- 
houses.  The  gas-bracket,  which  Dan  was  to  find 
burned  a  blue  flame  of  about  one  candle-power, 


140      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

sprouted  from  the  wall  beside  an  unsteady  pine  bu- 
reau. The  bed  was  narrow  and  its  mattress  hilly. 
The  landlady  said  that  she  would  send  for  pan's 
trunk,  and  left  to  give  the  necessary  directions. 
There  was  no  more  to  be  done,  and  Tom  must  hurry 
ferrywards. 

Man  and  boy  wanted  to  pace  the  room,  but,  that 
being  impossible,  they  faced  each  other  uncertainly. 
The  father  looked  at  his  watch  and  cleared  his  throat. 

"  Well,"  he  said. 

Dan  turned  half  away. 

"  Well,"  he  answered. 

"  I  guess  I'd  best  start,"  said  Tom,  in  much  the 
words  that  Dan  had  used,  that  morning,  in  Americus. 

"  I  guess  so,"  said  Dan. 

The  father  coughed  again. 

*  You  don't  think  I'd  better  go  to  Jersey  City  with 
you?  "  Dan,  his  eyes  still  averted,  at  length  inquired. 

"  No,"  said  his  father.  "  It's  gettin'  along  toward 
evenin',  an'  you  mightn't  know  the  way  back.  No." 

"  I  could  ask.    Shouldn't  I  go  as  far  as  the  ferry?  " 

"No:  'tain't  safe." 

Old  Tom  stood  there  awkwardly  and  aware  of 
his  awkwardness.  His  tall,  raw-boned  figure  was  not 
so  upright  as  of  old :  during  the  past  few  days  a  slight 
stoop  had  come  upon  the  shoulders,  as  if  life  were 
growing  heavier;  but  the  hazel  eyes  were  still  clear 
and  the  long  upper  lip,  if  it  trembled  now  and  then 
above  the  chin-beard,  was  generally  firm.  The  father 
was  conscious  that  his  boy  had,  in  a  sense  but  half 
understood,  become  mature,  and  this  embarrassed 
Tom  and  made  him  uncertain  what  he  should  say. 
He  ached  with  love,  and  with  longing  to  express  his 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       141 

love,  and  his  fears  and  his  sorrows  for  his  son;  and 
yet  he  was  still  in  the  grip  of  that  grotesque  Amer- 
ican convention  which  bids  one  hide  and  be  ashamed 
of  one's  natural  emotions. 

"  You'll  work  hard,"  he  said  at  last,  and  then 
added:  "  Won't  you?" 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  Dan. 

"  About  other  things  I  guess  I  needn't  say  nothin': 
you've  had  your  lesson." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

u  But  laziness,  that's  just  what  they  call  pessimism 
about  the  arrival  of  the  future.  An'  you'd  better 
always  be  obedient  an'  respectful  to  your  boss.  Re- 
member, he  knows  more'n  you  do." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  There's — there's  still  a  chance,  Dan'l.  Many  a 
boy's  made  your  mistake.  He  has  so,  an'  got  over 
it.  I  ain't  sayin'  it  wasn't  a  great  sin.  It  was.  But 
you — you  can  get  over  it.  Just  leave  all  the  trouble 
at  home  to  me,  an' — an'  try  to  keep  away  from  all 
such  things  from  now  on." 

The  father  hesitated. 

"  You  remember  all  I  said  to  you  that  day  I  took 
you  into  the  store?  "  he  then  pursued. 

Dan  assented,  silently. 

"  Well— that's  it,"  said  Tom.  "  Remember  that. 
Yes,  sir.  Try  to  remember  all  I've  tried  to  teach 
you,  an' — an',  good-by." 

He  put  out  his  hand  quickly. 

"  Don't  bother  comin'  down  to  the  front,  door," 
he  said.  £ 

Dan  gripped  the  outstretched  hand. 

"  Good-by,  father,"  he  answered. 


H2      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Then,  suddenly,  without  stopping  to  think,  Dan 
embraced  the  elder  man;  and  his  eyes  were  so  clouded 
that  he  did  not  see  him  go.  He  only  felt  the  kiss 
returned,  only  felt  his  arms  freed,  only  heard  the 
ballroom  door  close  and  the  sound  of  his  father's 
steps  descending  the  stairs. 

Dan  ran  down  the  stairs  and  reached  the  front 
door  before  his  father  had  turned  the  corner  of  the 
street  The  boy  watched  the  lank,  stooping  man  and 
saw  him  finally  swallowed  by  the  alien  crowd  that 
streamed  along  the  crossing. 

§  io.  And  the  crowd  proceeded  next,  with  no  re- 
gard even  with  no  consciousness  of  its  action,  to  swal- 
low Dan. 

He  passed  his  first   homesick  days  between   his 
boardrng-house  and  his  office.    At  the  boarding-house 
he  was  surrounded  by  sharp-voiced  girls  and  sharp- 
faced  men    all,   like  himself,   fighting  bitterly   the 
bread-and-butter  war,  each  alone,  each  a  unit  striving 
with  mankind.     At  the  office,  where  the  whistling 
Mr  ONe.ll  seemed  quite  to  have  forgotten  him,  and 
where  the  watchful  Mr.  Silverstone  appeared  ever 
lying  in  wait  for  mistakes,  Dan  did  the  routine  work 
of  registenng  on  the  blackboard  fractional  rises  and 
falls  of  stocks  that  were  no  more  than  unmeaning 
n,t,a  s  and  abbreviations  to  him,  surrounded  by  fel 
low-clerks   all  brought  up  as  he  had  been  in  the  ig- 
norance that  creates  vicious  ideals;  all  boasting  of 

niltlvl     I    °VeS'    m°Sdy    imagina^'    and    *eir 
nightly  drunkenness,  mostly  veracious;  all  hurrying 

" 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       143 

For  a  long  time  Dan  felt  that  his  punishment  was 
just,  but  more  than  he  could  bear.  For  a  long  time 
he  felt  that  he  wanted  nothing  but  to  go  home.  For 
a  long  time  his  body,  accustomed  to  the  better  fare 
of  Americus,  and  his  mind,  used  to  the  once  unre- 
garded attention  of  his  home,  withdrew  from  every 
expression  of  the  new  existence  into  which  they  had 
been  cast. 

There  came  a  letter  from  Old  Tom.  Irma,  who 
was  mentioned  not  by  name,  but  by  a  painful  locu- 
tion, had  left  town,  married,  gossip  said,  to  Snagsie 
Fry,  thus  proving  that  she  was  the  bad  woman  that 
Tom  had  suspected  her  to  be  and  relieving  both  Tom 
and  Dan  of  responsibility  in  a  matter  in  which,  after 
all,  Dan  might  not  be  the  responsible  party.  Never- 
theless, business  was  just  now  poor  and  change  was 
always  unwise.  Dan  had  better  remain  where  he 
was,  learn,  work  hard,  deserve  a  raise  of  wages,  save, 
prepare  himself  for  a  successful  career.  There  was 
a  great  deal  of  good  advice,  escaped  from  a  strong 
constraint. 

The  mother  wrote  regularly,  giving  the  local  news. 
Sometimes  she  inclosed  a  five-dollar  note,  and  Dan 
was  glad.  Always  there  underlay  her  written  word 
something  that  seemed  to  the  boy  to  imply  a  fear  for 
him  in  the  big  city,  and  this  Dan  at  first  received 
with  a  careless  eye  and  at  last  with  guilty  dis- 
taste. 

For  Dart's  environment  slowly  did  for  him  what 
environment  is  certain  sooner  or  later  to  do  for  nearly 
all.  Environment  is  the  sum  of  one's  own  training 
plus  the  training  of  those  who  make  one's  surround- 
ings the  thing  that  they  are ;  and  Dan's  training  and 


144      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  scene  in  which  he  now  found  himself  were — just 
what  you  know  them  to  be. 

During  the  next  year,  Old  Tom's  business,  far  from 
improving,  at  first  stood  still  and  then  began  slowly 
to  decline;  so  that  his  son's  return  home  was  now 
postponed  and  again  took  the  form  of  hurried  vaca- 
tional  visits.  Dan's  early  upbringing,  supplemented 
by  his  present  condition,  a  supplementary  supereroga- 
tion, was  at  last  ready  to  resume  its  work  upon  his 
character.  The  time  came  when  he  began  to  like  his 
companions.  The  time  came  when  he  began  to  be 
like  them. 


IX 


TIME  is  so  much  in  the  passing  and  so  little  in 
the  retrospect  that  the  earlier  years  of  Dan 
Barnes's  life  in  New  York  seem  now  to  him 
that  lived  them  as  a  dream  in  which  the  dreamer  has 
passed  through  many  days  in  as  many  minutes,  and 
the  order  of  their  events  is  as  uncertain  as  that  of  the 
events  in  a  recollected  dream.  As  in  the  case  of  his 
childhood,  Dan  remembers  them,  when  he  remembers 
them  at  all,  rather  in  an  arbitrary  sequence  imposed 
by  some  unknown  power  within  himself,  than  in  the 
sequence  of  their  importance  or  their  actual  hap- 
pening. 

There  is,  for  instance,  an  evening  at  dinner  with 
Gideon  Giddey  and  Giddey's  daughter  Madge,  of 
which  at  the  time  he  thought  but  little.  There  is  the 
reappearance  of  Snagsie  Fry  and  a  night  with  Snagsie 
at  a  music-hall.  There  are  certain  always  rarer  visits 
home;  and  there  is  a  talk  with  Harold  Richardson, 
who  seems  to  have  come  into  the  broker's  office 
changed  in  a  day  from  the  child  that  tortured  a  dog 
into  a  lad  of  premature  and  abnormal  profundity. 
All  of  these  things  are  still  fresh  in  Dan's  memory 
when  he  chooses  to  look  at  them.  Whole  sentences, 
gestures,  even  the  tones  of  the  past  voices  are  pre- 
served, apparently  by  no  effort  of  his  own.  And  yet 
the  momentous,  though  slow,  process  by  which  he  lost 
his  terror  of  sex  and  was  open  again  to  the  sex-lure, 

145 


146      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  entire  course 'that  led  him  back  to  the  attitude 
that  his  training  impelled  him  once  more  to  assume, 
is  lost  almost  completely.  Even  the  first  overt  act, 
the  incident  of  the  nr§\  street  girl,  is  less  distinct  than 
are  certain  words  of  Snagsie  Fry  or  certain  phrases  of 
Harold  Richardson. 

§  2.  In  the  beginning  there  is  no  doubt  that  Dan 
long  retained  an  abject  fear  of  womankind.  The 
calamity  in  which  he  continued  to  regard  Irma  as  an 
active  agent  bred  in  him  a  mistrust  that  often 
amounted  to  hatred.  The  woman,  he  was  sure,  had 
tempted  him,  and  he  had  eaten :  the  loss  of  the  para- 
dise of  Americus  was  the  consequence.  Not  content 
with  seducing  him,  Irma,  he  felt,  had  lied  to  him 
about  the  result  of  his  seduction.  He  accordingly 
began  life  in  New  York  with  the  conviction  that  he 
had  both  sinned  and  been  sinned  against,  and  with 
the  assumption  that,  even  when  legitimatized,  the 
physical  relation  between  the  sexes  was  ob- 
scene. 

The  time  came,  later,  when  some  of  his  former 
ideals  returned,  when  he  had  poignant,  albeit  transi- 
tory, glimpses  of  his  boyish  vision :  mighty,  though 
for  some  years  fleeting,  yearnings  for  a  love  that  was 
at  once  pure  and  perfect  with  a  woman  that  would  be 
at  once  perfect  and  pure.  Still  impelled  by  the  forces 
that  had  guided  his  childhood,  he  was,  little  as  he 
guessed  it,  being  shaped  for  complete  allegiance  to 
the  old  concept.  His  mood  of  antipathy  was  inevita- 
bly swinging  him  about  the  circle.  The  more  violent 
his  present  rebellion,  the  more  intense  was  his  future 
loyalty  certain  to  be.  But  just  now  he  could  have 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       147 

gone  forth,  if  at  all,  only  to  destroy.  Rather,  he  shut 
himself  within  his  own  heart.  He  had  his  moments 
of  strong  desire  to  seek  comfort  in  confession  to 
some  sympathetic  brain  wiser  than  his  own,  but  he 
did  not  now  have  sufficient  faith  in  his  fellow  human 
beings.  He  could  imagine  no  reconciliation  between 
his  condition  and  his  sense  of  justice,  no  logical  ex- 
planation of  life's  realities.  Having  been  taught  to 
lie  in  matters  of  sex,  he  now,  lying  in  most  matters, 
lied  most  in  sex-matters.  He  wore  a  mask.  He  lis- 
tened, but  he  did  not  speak. 

This,  of  course,  was  a  condition  that  could  not  in 
all  its  details  long  endure,  and  in  so  far  as  it  con- 
cerned itself  with  the  question  of  the  merely  casual 
relation  between  men  and  women  it  was  soon  altered. 
The  clerks  in  the  offices  of  O'Neill  &  Silyerstone 
were  not  of  Dan's  mind.  All  these  young  men  had, 
it  seemed,  pasts — pasts  that  were  as  recent  as  last 
summer,  as  last  night;  and  they  liked  to  talk  about 
them.  They  talked  to  Dan,  and  Dan  heard  them  at 
first  with  the  ears  of  distrust,  but  at  last  with  the 
potent  awakening  of  his  forsworn  impulses. 

He  learned  much.  He  learned  that,  dangerous  as 
serving  girls  might  be,  there  was  another  sort  of  girl 
that  passed,  in  those  years,  nightly  up  and  down 
Forty-second  Street,  and  that,  from  this  sort,  there 
was,  in  the  terms  of  his  fellow-workers,  "  no  come- 
back." He  learned,  too,  that,  whatever  women  may 
think  of  Joseph,  among  men  his  name  is  generally 
greeted  with  a  sneer.  Dan's  life  in  the  boarding- 
house  whetted  the  appetites,  the  indulgence  of  which 
his  timidity  at  first  forbade;  and  thus,  in  the  end, 
he  was  to  know  that  the  emotions  stimulated  by  his 


148      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

past  home-training  and  his  present  economic  con- 
dition were  stronger  than  his  courage  was  weak. 
Meanwhile,  as  he  had  been  started,  so  he  was  con- 
tinuing: the  sense  of  his  shame  was  no  greater  than 
the  habits  of  his  boyhood.  He  passed  his  life  between 
the  indulgence  of  both. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  Dan  remembers  Gideon 
Giddey. 

§  3.  Giddey  was  the  confidential  clerk  of  the 
members  of  the  firm.  He  worked  in  mystery  and  in 
a  little  cubby-hole  that  opened  upon  their  private  of- 
fices, whence  he  seldom  emerged  to  the  general  room 
and  to  the  vision  of  the  general  clerks.  The  young 
men  respected  him,  because,  they  said,  he  knew  .more 
about  the  business  than  either  O'Neill  or  Silverstone, 
and  they  disliked  him  because  he  seemed  so  old  and 
because  he  had  never  been  known  to  utter  more  than 
a  hundred  words  a  day.  When  he  did  thrust  his  thin 
neck  through  the  door  that  led  from  the  private  of- 
fices, it  was  for  the  most  part  to  call  some  c'erk  to 
an  unpleasant  interview  with  his  employers,  or  to 
survey  the  entire  corps  with  a  narrow,  near-sighted 
glance  that  appeared  to  be  determining  whom  he 
should  next  summon  to  such  an  interview. 

Giddey  was  a  stoop-shouldered  man  that  resembled 
a  moulting  ostrich.  He  had  thin  shanks  and  wore 
thick  spectacles ;  and  his  old  black  suit  hung  upon  him 
with  all  the  nicety  of  fit  enjoyed  by  the  clothes  on 
a  Bowery  clothes  dummy.  His  glistening  pate  was  as 
bare  as  a  billiard-ball,  but  just  above  his  faunlike  ears 
twin  wisps  of  iron-gray  hair  were  brushed  ag- 
gressively forward.  His  long  nose  was  as  sharp  as 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       149 

a  pointer's,  and  his  chin  sharp  with  the  point  of  a 
man  that  needs  false  teeth  and  scorns  them.  His 
eyes,  when  his  spectacles  revealed  them,  appeared  to 
be  a  pale  blue;  and  his  mouth  was  a  long,  tight  line. 
He  was  somewhat  deaf,  but  not  so  deaf  as  he  seemed, 
and  this  gave  him  the  advantage  of  answering  a  ques- 
tion or  not,  as  he  chose. 

Dan  had  always  shared  the  common  opinion  of 
Giddey,  so  that  he  was  somewhat  surprised  when,  one 
afternoon,  the  little  man  popped  his  bald  head 
through  the  door,  blinked,  peered,  and  then  suddenly 
bounced  to  Dan's  side. 

"  Boarding-house?  "  demanded  Giddey.  His  voice 
was  high  and  his  enunciation  rapid. 

"What?  "asked  Dan. 

"  Thought  so,"  responded  Giddey,  patently  mis- 
taking the  younger  clerk's  interrogation  for  an  as- 
sent. "  Dinner  with  me  to-night." 

The  same  words  from  Mr.  Silverstone  would  have 
surprised  Dan  no  more. 

"  I Thank  you,"  he  stammered,  "  but  I'm 

not  sure " 

"  Right,"  said  Giddey.  "  Meet  you  here  soon  as 
work's  finished." 

And  the  inner  office  had  swallowed  him  before 
Dan  could  reframe  his  reply. 

§  4.  The  Giddeys  lived  in  one  of  the  four  flats  on 
the  top  floor  of  a  house  in  Harlem.  A  dark  hall  led 
to  their  parlor;  the  parlor  opened  upon  the  dining- 
room,  and  tkese  two  were  the  only  rooms  that  faced 
the  street.  Back  of  the  dining-room  was  the  kitchen, 
and  between  the  kitchen  and  the  hall  was  a  bathroom, 


150      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  sole  ventilation  of  which  came  through  a  small 
opening  in  the  roof.  Gideon's  bedroom  had  a  door 
to  the  hall  and  one  window  on  a  light-shaft.  So  had 
his  daughter's. 

All,  however,  that  Dan  at  first  observed  was  the 
clutter  of  books  in  the  parlor.  There  were  book- 
shelves three  feet  high  about  three  of  the  walls;  but 
there  were  great  gaps  in  them,  and  before  them,  on 
the  floor,  piles  of  books,  heaped  as  fallen  stones  are 
heaped  before  the  walls  of  a  ruined  fortress.  Some 
of  the  books  were  open;  from  many  protruded  bits  of 
paper  to  mark  a  reader's  "  place  ";  the  covers  of  all 
were  battered.  Books  crowded  so  much  of  the  table, 
in  the  center  of  the  room,  that  they  left  small  space 
for  the  green-shaded  lamp  upon  it. 

"  Come  in,"  said  Gideon.  "  Look  out.  Don't  step 
on  Petty.  That's  his  *  Taxes  and  Constitutions.' 
Here.  This  is  the  best  chair.  I'll  lift  this  Seligman 
and  Bax  from  it.  So." 

He  took  from  the  seat  of  a  Morris-chair  two  vol- 
umes that  he  placed  on  the  top  of  a  pile  on  the  floor 
beside  it. 

"  Sit  down,"  he  said. 

Dan  gathered  up  the  skirts  of  his  sack  coat.  He 
was  a  little  scornful  and  more  embarrassed. 

"Dinner's  ready!"  called  a  pleasant  voice  from 
somewhere.  "  You  were  late,  father." 

The  door  from  the  dining-room  opened,  and  Dan, 
arrested  in  the  act  of  seating  himself,  saw  the  figure 
of  a  slim  girl,  silhouetted  there.  From  behind  her 
streamed  light  and  the  odors  of  cooking. 

"  Right,"  said  Giddey.  He  led  the  way  into  a 
small  but  comfortable  apartment,  with  an  ash  side- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      151 

board  oak-veneered  and  an  extension-table  set  for 
three.  "  Madge,"  he  continued,  "  this  is  the  Mr. 
Barnes  I  said,  this  morning,  I'd  bring  back  with  me. 
My  daughter,  Barnes." 

Dan  found  himself  blushing  and  shaking  hands 
with  the  girl.  He  had  put  out  his  own  hand  with 
the  arm  high  and  the  fingers  bent  in  the  manner  that 
young  clerks  just  then  thought  "  correct "  in  greeting 
young  ladies;  but  the  girl  met  him  with  a  firm,  level, 
full-hand  clasp  precisely  like  a  man's.  Dan  looked  at 
her  and  proclaimed  her  so  handsome  that  he  looked 
hurriedly  away.  His  impression  was  of  curling  black 
hair  parted  over  the  center  of  her  forehead,  of  an 
oval  face  and  clear  gray  eyes  that  looked  into  his 
with  a  frank  revelation  and  equally  frank  inquiry  to 
which  he  was  unaccustomed  from  women. 

But  Gideon  speedily  proceeded  to  control  the  center 
of  the  domestic  stage.  The  silent  man  of  the  broker's 
office  began  to  speak  upon  a  dozen  subjects  at  one 
time  and  at  interminable  length.  It  was  as  if  his 
mouth  secreted  words  as  the  liver  secrets  bile,  and  as 
if  this  secretion,  going  on  all  day  long  under  official 
repression,  must  vent  itself  through  the  scant  hours 
of  leisure.  The  little  old  man  opened  his  lips  not 
so  much  to  introduce  food  as  to  cast  forth  phrases. 
His  pale  eyes  gleamed,  his  pointed  chin  wagged  in- 
cessantly. He  was  as  loquacious  as  a  phonograph. 
Though  Dan  now  and  then  managed  to  interject  a  few 
embarrassed  words,  apparently  addressed  to  his  soup 
or  to  the  beefsteak  that  followed  it,  Gideon  rattled 
constantly  on  ,in  a  monologue  that  was  like  one  of 
those  railway  maps,  which  are  so  full  of  spurs  and 
branch  lines  and  side-tracks  that  the  eye  of  the 


152      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

prospective  traveler  can  never  remain  long  upon  the 
main  road. 

"  Waste,  waste !  "  Dan  was  aware  of  Gideon  say- 
ing, apropos  of  something  long  since  shunted  down 
a  branch-line.  ;'  That's  what's  the  matter  with  our 
civilization."  His  own  scant  money  always  somehow 
"paid  itself  out";  but  upon  national  economics,  he 
spoke  not  as  the  scribes.  "  Waste  everywhere :  in  the 
ruined  businesses,  in  the  suicides  of  small  retailers,  in 
the  bankruptcy  of  little  mills,  in  the  breaking  of  good 
workingmen,  in  the  casting  away  of  women's  bodies 
and  the  toil-twisting  of  childish  muscles  and  brains. 
The  whole  thing  is  just  the  wanton  wastefulness  of 
half-baked,  lazy,  short-sighted  intellectual  processes 
on  the  part  of  government  that  thinks  it  can  direct 
mankind." 

Dan  sat  up  with  a  gasp.  What  was  that  which  his 
host  had  said  about  women's  bodies?  The  young 
man  shot  a  glance  at  Madge,  but  Madge,  offering 
him  a  dish  full  of  fried  potatoes,  met  him  with  a 
direct,  gray-blue  gaze.  He  sought  cover  under  some 
reply  that  would  not  betray  the  point  that  had  at- 
tracted him. 

"  But,"  he  volunteered,  "  men  make  their  own 
governments.  In  this  country,  anyhow,  they 
do." 

What  he  would  have  wished  to  say,  was  that  the 
logic  of  majorities  is  this:  though  the  individuals 
composing  the  majority  are  fools,  they  are  just  so 
many  different  sorts  of  fools;  their  follies  contend; 
and  therefore,  when  they  come  together,  the  one  thing 
that  they  can  agree  upon  must  be  something  rather 
sane. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      153 

Gideon,  however,  understood.  He  shook  his 
gleaming  poll. 

"  That  argument,'*  said  he,  "  is  as  cheap  as  the 
hand-shake  of  a  candidate.  It  would  apply  in  a 
democracy,  but  there  is  no  democracy  in  our  day; 
there  are  only  monarchies  and  republics.  For  my 
part,  I  can't  make  out  which  is  worse." 

It  was  a  night  of  surprises  for  Dan. 

"  You  don't  mean  you  don't  believe  in  a  republic?  " 
he  panted. 

"  Emphatically  I  do  mean  that,"  snapped  Gideon. 

"Then  what  are  you?" 

"  Nothing.  A  contradiction  in  terms.  Those  who 
don't  call  me  Socialist  call  me  Anarchist." 

Socialist!  Anarchist!  Dan  recalled  the  crude 
newspaper  stories  of  the  Haymarket  riot  in  Chicago. 
Why,  these  people  believed  in  assassination  and  free 
love !  They  believed  in  "  dividing  up  "  ! 

"  I  don't  think  it's  right,"  he  said  stoutly,  "  to 
make  people  get  to  depend  on  charity." 

That  was  enough  to  set  Gideon's  train  of  thought 
whirring  along  a  new  track.  Nobody  wanted  char- 
ity; nobody,  he  said,  wanted  anything  but  justice. 
He  began  with  surplus  value.  He  showed,  to  his 
own  complete  satisfaction,  that  the  employee  created 
that  value.  He  proved  that  the  employee  was  not 
recompensed  for  his  creation.  He  demonstrated  that, 
therefore,  Profit  was  nothing  but  the  employer's  seiz- 
ure of  what  belonged  of  right  to  the  employee.  He 
gesticulated;  he  forgot  to  eat.  And  this  was  the 
withered,  confidential  clerk  of  a  brokerage  firm,  who 
had  achieved  a  reputation  for  silence! 

Politely  Dan  tried  to  follow,  but  was  too  lost  in 


154      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

wonder.  When  Gideon  caught  his  breath — he  never 
paused  long  enough  to  draw  a  fresh  one — his  guest 
could  only  mutter  something  about  its  being  necessary 
in  this  world  to  take  all  that  one  can  get. 

"  If  you  want  to  live  truly,  you  mustn't  merely 
take:  you  mast  give;  you  must  want  to  give." 

It  was  the  clear  voice  of  Madge  that  made  this 
response.  She  drew  Dan's  eyes. 

He  saw  her  fully  now.  He  saw  her  seated  oppo- 
site him,  the  white  silk  shirt  of  a  boy  draped  to  the 
uncorseted  curves  of  her  childish  bust,  the  shortened 
sleeves,  ceasing  at  the  elbow  and  leaving  free  the  firm 
arms,  wrists  on  the  table,  hands  clasped  before  her. 
His  glance  rose  from  her  sturdy  throat  disclosed  by 
the  low  collar,  to  the  pure,  red  mouth;  to  the  clear 
cheeks,  faintly  tinged  with  pink;  to  the  delicately 
aquiline  nose. 

"  I  wonder,"  it  flashed  upon  him,  "  if  old  Giddey 
can  be  a  Jew." 

He  was  altogether  puzzled.  He  had  never  been 
among  people  whose  general  conversation  was  com- 
posed of  sociological  discussion.  He  had  not  known 
that,  outside  of  the  class-room  and  off  the  political 
platform,  there  were  such  people.  .  .  .  And  this 
girl :  there  was  something  like  a  boy's  in  all  her  move- 
ments; something He  wanted  to  change  the 

direction  of  the  talk.  He  found  himself,  with  af- 
fected lightness,  saying: 

"  Well,  I  wish  someone  could  afford  to  give 
me •"  . 

"Order?  Law  and  order?"  Gideon's  perverse 
deafness  had  caught  a  word  unuttered.  "  Of  course, 
I'm  not  for  order  in  the  present  state  of  things.  Or- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

der  never  got  anywhere.  Order  is  something  that 
stands  still.  You  have  to  meet  disorder  with  dis- 
order. The  times  are  disordered;  they're  diseased. 
The  only  healthy  sign  of  the  times  is  in  the  increase 
of  the  birth-rate  among  the  workers  and  its  decrease 
among  their  exploiters." 

Dan  choked  over  the  glass  of  water  that  he  had 
raised  to  his  lips.  Was  there  no  turning  the  man 
from  subjects  that  ought  not  to  be  discussed  in  the 
presence  of  girls? 

Apparently  there  was  none.  Apparently  the  old 
man  was  bent  upon  further  horrors,  for  he  was  con- 
tinuing: 

"  Here  we  are,  a  nation  that  won't  understand  the 
fundamental  facts  of  life.  Well,  if  we  won't  under- 
stand the  foundations,  how  can  we  understand  all 
that  rests  on  'em?  We  lie  to  our  children  in  every- 
thing; or,  if  we  don't,  we  just  refuse  to  explain.  We 
teach  'em  to  accept  without  question  the  anger  of 
their  parents  and  teachers.  What's  the  logical  re- 
sult ?  They  tolerate  oppression ;  they  grow  up  to  ac- 
cept injustice.  As  for  sex " 

Dan's  head  whirled.  He  was  shocked  for  his 
traditions;  he  was  shocked  on  Madge's  account.  He 
stole  another  look  at  her  and  was  more  shocked  to 
find  her  face  serene,  frank,  unmoved.  He  lost  much 
of  what  Gideon  was  saying.  Not  until  they  had  re- 
turned to  the  parlor  and  found  seats  among  the  tur- 
bulent books  there,  with  the  girl  on  the  floor  at  her 
father's  knee,  did  the  host's  words  again  reach  Dan's 
comprehension : 

"  The  social  evil  can't  be  cured  by  making  a  law 
or  enforcing  one.  It's  an  economic,  an  educational 


156      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

question.  .  .  .  You  can  scatter  the  wrong  by  a  law, 
but  you  can't  end  it.  ...  You  can  stop  us  from 
writing  about  such  things,  and  you  can  stop  your 
children  from  reading  about  them ;  but  you  can't  stop 
your  children  from  thinking  about  them.  You  can't 
stop  passion.  All  that  you  can  do,  you  are  doing: 
you  are  perverting  it.  ...  And  the  economics! 
Because  of  poverty,  we  can't  any  longer  breed  up- 
ward ;  we  must  have  no  children,  or  else  we  must  face 
the  fact,  and  that's  what  we  do  do,  that  our  children 
can't  be  so  well  off  in  life  as  their  parents  were.  ... 
You'd  think  that  we  might  at  least  prepare  them  by 
telling  them  the  truth  about  sex.  But  no,  not  we! 
Parents  still  go  about  pretending  that  the  world  is 
the  same  to-day  as  it  was  yesterday;  while  all  the 
while,  the  change  is  here.  We  go  about  pretending 
that  nobody  knows  what  everybody  practices.  We 
educate,  or  we  make  a  more  or  less  cloudy  attempt  to 
educate,  our  daughters  and  sons  to  face  life;  and  yet 
we  never  say  one  word  to  them  about  the  very  fact 
of  life  itself.  We  send  them  out,  our  loved  and  cher- 
ished, the  souls  and  bodies  that  we've  tied  our 
hopes  to — send  'em  out  to  meet  the  greatest,  the 
strongest  force  in  human  nature,  utterly  ignorant,  ut- 
terly unprepared." 

He  ran  on  and  on,  speaking  in  the  shrill  voice  of 
the  deaf,  punctuating  his  speech  with  the  stiff  gestures 
of  the  aged.  He  was  secure  in  the  most  efficacious 
of  mental  delights:  the  sense  of  one's  intellectual  su- 
periority to  one's  hearers. 

How  could  the  old  man  dare  to  talk  thus  before 
this  girl?  Dan  could  not  look  at  her  openly;  and 
all  the  while  he  knew  that  she  was  receiving  the  flood 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       157 

of  words  as  if  they  were  matter  of  course.  She  was 
very  young,  he  reflected;  far  younger  than  was  he, 
and  yet  somehow,  far  more  grown  up.  She  was  cer- 
tainly like  no  woman  he  had  ever  met.  She  seemed 
never  to  have  known  that  some  things  are  for  men 
and  others  for  women,  that  some  things  are  to  be 
mentioned  to  none  but  persons  of  one's  own  sex.  She 
was  so  thoroughly  feminine  in  her  beauty;  in  her  man- 
ners, even  in  the  free  play  of  her  arms,  so  amazingly 
boyish. 

"...  and  that's  why  I  asked  you  up  here,"  Gid- 
eon was  now  saying.  "  Without  a  word  from  some- 
body, I  didn't-  like  to  see  you  going  the  way  of  those 
other  whipper-snappers  at  the  office." 

What  had  the  word  been?  Dan  did  not  know, 
could  not  guess.  It  had  floated  over  his  head  while 
he  was  submerged  by  the  billows  of  confusion. 

"  Because,"  concluded  Gideon,  "  in  the  matter  of 
sex-education,  naked  savages  are  two  thousand  years 
in  advance  of  us.  From  puberty  to  the  time  when 
he  earns  enough  money  to  marry,  a  man  is  com- 
manded to  let  woman  alone.  Well,  he  rarely  makes 
enough  money  to  marry  before  he  is  thirty-five,  if  he 
does  then.  The  intervening  years  are  the  years  of 
his  greatest  sex-development.  How  many  of  such 
men  obey  the  commands  of  society,  and  how  many  are 
fitly  trained  to 'break  them  with  safety?  ..." 

§  5.  Dan  had  begun  by  not  understanding  and 
had  ended  by  not  listening.  He  reached  the  street 
at  last  with  burning  cheeks.  Plunging  into  that  busy, 
lighted,  sensible  thoroughfare  was  like  coming  from 
a  dim,  cold  church,  where  they  preached  damnation, 


158      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

into  the  reassuring  warmth  of  noon.  He  remembered 
then  only  a  gesticulating  man  and  a  grave-eyed  girl. 
Giddey  must  be  mad.  He  must  be  mad  because 
he  was  not  bringing  up  Madge  in  the  way  in  which 
Tom  Barnes  had  brought  up  Dan.  Yes,  to  be  sure; 
what  a  queer  old  fool  the  fellow  was — and  what  a 
fine-looking  daughter  he  had ! 

§  6.  After  that,  at  the  office,  he  avoided  Giddey. 
The  man  was  disturbing,  and  Dan  did  not  like  to  be 
disturbed.  The  younger  clerk  had  been  brought  up 
to  believe  in  the  obtaining  order  of  things.  The 
obtaining  order  was  his  standard  of  sanity.  He  knew 
that  he  ought  to  pay  a  dinner-call  at  the  Harlem  flat, 
but  he  knew  that  there  was  no  hurry  for  ten  days 
or  twelve.  After  twelve  days,  he  postponed  the  call. 
He  postponed  again.  Then  he  resolutely  forgot. 

Nor  did  Gideon  make  more  than  one  attempt  at 
reminder.  On  an  afternoon,  as  the  day's  final  lull 
was  settling  upon  the  office,  he  shot  into  the  general 
room.  He  found  an  undersized  clerk  with  a  daring 
waistcoat,  who  was  picking  his  teeth  with  a  pen  and 
describing  in  a  tremendous  effort  at  nonchalant  verac- 
ity, how  a  woman  of  fashion,  whom  he  would  not 
name,  condescended  to  him  in  secret.  Dan  stood  in 
an  attitude  of  sheepishly  appreciative  attention;  and 
Gideon  put  his  hand  on  Dan's  sleeve. 

Dan  turned  quickly  and  blushed. 

"  Haven't  seen  much  of  you,  lately,"  said  Gideon, 
in  his  high  tones. 

"  No,"  said  Dan.  "  I — I've  been  meaning  to — 
to I've  been  so  busy  that  ..." 

The  words  trailed  off  into  silence,  but  Gideon,  with 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       159 

one  look  from  behind  his  thick  spectacles,  turned 
sharply  away. 

Dan  laughed  awkwardly  and  renewed  his  atten- 
tion to  the  amiable  youth  in  the  daring  waistcoat. 

Young  Barnes  was  leading  a  cramped  and  narrow 
life.  He  hated  his  boarding-house,  but  he  could  af- 
ford no  better,  and  Old  Tom's  letters  did  not  en- 
courage. 

Anybody  that  was  not  Old  Tom's  son  would,  in- 
deed, have  surmised  that  something  had  happened  to 
that  merchant,  not  entirely  something  from  without. 
Such  an  onlooker  would  have  suggested  that  Old 
Tom  was  losing  his  grip.  But  not  Dan.  Thomas 
Barnes  was  the  type  of  parent  that  seeks  to  personify 
strength  to  his  children. 

Thus  Dan  fretted  the  more  because  his  condition 
seemed  the  result  of  an  arbitrary  decision  upon  his 
father's  part.  At  first  he  had  thought  the  decision 
that  he  must  support  himself  was  a  just  punishment; 
but  now  his  father  seemed  stingy,  seemed  at  least 
absurdly  over-cautious.  Dan  wanted  many  amuse- 
ments that  he  could  not  often  have,  and  was  again 
beginning  consciously  to  want  others  that  he  still 
thought  he  must  never  have. 


THE  reappearance  of  Snagsie  was  no  less  im- 
pressive than  the  revelation  of  Gideon,  though 
in  a  vastly  different  manner.  Essentially  but 
an  argument  that,  had  it  not  come  from  one  source 
would  infallibly  have  arrived  from  another,  it  long 
seemed  to  Dan  the  full  cause  of  the  incident  that  fol- 
lowed it.  Materially,  Snagsie  Fry  did  not  reappear 
at  all.  What  reappeared  was  Lysander  G.  Fry.  The 
barelegged  boy  of  those  rainy  afternoons  in  the 
Froenfields'  barn  was  gone  forever;  gone  forever, 
too,  was  the  rustic  roue  that  had  come  back  from 
Harrisburg  to  dazzle,  for  a  brief  but  awful  visit,  the 
quiet  streets  of  Americus.  The  brain  that  had  di- 
rected these  two  other  personalities  now  directed  their 
logical  third. 

Dan,  homeward  bound  after  a  hard  day's  work, 
had  descended  from  a  Broadway  car  at  the  corner 
nearest  his  boarding-house.  He  was  facing  the 
swinging-doors  of  a  large  hotel,  when  the  doors  swung 
open  and  emitted  a  tall,  broad-shouldered  young  man 
in  a  tan-colored  paddock  overcoat  with  facings  of 
brown  velvet,  and  a  broad  black  band  ^bout  the  left 
sleeve. 

"  Well,"  bawled  the  young  man.  "  Dimned  if  it 
ain't  Dan  Barnes !  " 

Dan  looked.     His   eyes,   running  by  the   brown 

160 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       161 

lapels,  passed  a  patch  of  striped,  stiff  shirt  adorned 
by  a  crimson  tie  in  which  sparkled  a  stone.  They 
passed  a  high  collar  open  to  a  ruddy  throat,  and  they 
rested  upon  the  face  of  an  old  companion. 

Yet  changed.  The  bulging  forehead  of  Snagsie 
Fry  was  there,  the  hooked  nose,  the  prominent  ears, 
and  the  retreating  chin;  but  the  eyes,  though  as  pis- 
catory as  of  old,  were  more  knowing.  The  skin  once 
pasty  had  begun  to  glow  a  perpetual  pink;  the  figure 
was  fuller  and  more  assured;  the  man's  manner 
easier;  his  whole  air  to  Dan's  observation  that  of  one 
acquainted  with  large  cities  and  large  interests. 
There  were  already  a  few  faint  lines  in  his  face,  and 
he  flaunted  the  glory  of  a  waxed  mustache. 

The  horrid  specter  of  Irma  leaped  into  Dan's 
mind.  He  wanted  to  run  away;  but  Fry  had  gripped 
his  hand  and  was  squeezing  the  knuckles  until  they 
tingled  with  exquisite  pain. 

"  Heard  you  were  in  N'York  somewhere,"  Fry 
was  saying.  u  Certainly  glad  to  see  you.  It's  just 
like  old  times.  Come  in  and  have  a  drink." 

"  Thanks,"  said  Dan.  "I  am  not  thirsty." 
Would  the  fellow  never  free  his  hand? 

Fry  laughed  loudly. 

"  You  certainly  talk  like  home,"  he  answered. 
"  Nobody  in  N'York  drinks  because  he's  thirsty." 

"  I  mean,"  corrected  Dan,  "  I  just  had  one." 

He  lied,  of  course.  Except  for  a  few  reckless  oc- 
casions when  he  had  sipped  at  a  glass  of  beer  and 
disliked  it,  he  had  drunk  almost  nothing  since  his 
one  evening  ef  drunkenness  at  college,  now  seem- 
ingly so  long  ago.  He  thought  it  brave  to  drink,  and 
he  thought  it  wrong.  Fry,  as  Dan  would  have  known 


1 62      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

instinctively,  thought  it  merely  customary.  So, 
trained  against  debate,  Dan  lied. 

"  Just  had  one?  "  repeated  Fry.  "  Then  it's  time 
for  another.  Come  on." 

He  released  Dan's  hand  only  to  grip  Dan's  arm. 
He  led  his  victim  into  the  hotel's  barroom. 

"What'll  you  have?" 

Dan  called  upon  his  courage. 

"  Beer,"  he  said. 

"  Beer?  "  Fry's  mustache  twisted  upward  over  a 
broad  grin.  "  Seems  to  me  I've  heard  that  word  be- 
fore, but  not  since  I  left  the  country.  All  right. 
Have  it  your  own  way,  son." 

He  produced  a  coin  from  a  jingling  pocket  and 
rapped  loudly  with  it  on  the  shining  surface  of  the 
bar.  "  Eddie !  "  he  called  to  the  nearest  barkeeper. 
"A  little  attention,  please.  A  beer  and  one  high- 
ball—Bourbon." 

While  they  waited  for  the  drink,  he  talked  much 
but  vaguely  of  his  own  prosperity.  It  appeared  that 
he  was  still  with  the  firm  that  had  sent  him  first  to 
Harrisburg  and  then  to  Trenton,  but  that  the  firm 
had  considerably  enlarged  its  operations ;  though  just 
what  those  operations  were  and  just  what  was  his  part 
in  them,  Fry  neglected  to  mention. 

"  It's  a  big  thing.  Dealing  with  nothing  less  than 
seven  figures,"  he  said.  "  No  small  games  any  more 
for  yours  truly." 

Dan  did  not  reply.  He  did  not  dare  to  ask  ques- 
tions: he  was  afraid  of  the  specter  of  Irma  now  pain- 
fully vivid. 

"  Well,"  remarked  Fry,  when  his  glass  had  come 
and  he  had  gripped  it  in  his  fist,  "  here  we  are.  This 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       163 

is  what  killed  father:  here's  my  revenge."  And  he 
took  a  long  pull  at  the  drink,  made  a  wry  face,  and 
shivered. 

"  I  didn't  know  your  father  was  dead,"  Dan  ven- 
tured, his  eyes  reverting  to  the  black  band  on  the 
sleeve  of  Fry's  overcoat;  "  I  am  sorry." 

Again  Fry  laughed. 

"Dead?  My  old  man?  Don't  you  believe  it. 
Too  well  preserved  in  alcohol:  the  germ  that  bites 
him  dies." 

"  But  I  thought  you  said -" 

"  Oh,"  explained  Fry;  "  that's  just  a  gag.  Where 
do  you  keep  yourself,  anyhow?  Nobody's  dead  but 
my  wife." 

Dan  felt  his  lips  draw  tight  against  his  teeth.  Was 
he  sorry  for  Irma?  He  knew  that  he  ought  to  be 
sorry;  but  he  knew  that  he  was  immensely  relieved 
on  his  own  account.  He  could  find  only  one  word. 

"  When?  "he  asked. 

"  Oh  " — Fry  pursed  his  lips;  with  the  old  familiar 
gesture,  he  tugged  at  the  lobe  of  an  ear — "  about  six 
months  ago.  I  didn't  go  into  full  mourning,  you 
see.  I  don't  believe  in  going  into  mourning.  Be- 
sides, I  didn't  hear  of  it  for  weeks.  Of  course  we 
weren't  living  together." 

Dan  wanted  to  ask  why,  but  Fry's  narrow  eyes 
were  regarding  him  fixedly. 

"  Drink  up,"  said  Fry,  "  and  have  another." 

"  No,  thanks,"  said  Dan;  "  I  don't  take  much." 

"  Aw,  come  on." 

"  I  don't  take  much." 

"  Nor  me ;  still,  you  don't  meet  an  old  friend  every 
day.  Have  a  fresh  one,  anyhow." 


i64      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

So  Dan  allowed  his  scarcely  tasted  beer  to  be 
whisked  away  by  the  barkeeper. 

"  Do  it  again,  Eddie,"  commanded  Fry,  "  and  pass 
out  some  real  liquor  this  time.  You  people  are  han- 
dling cheap  stuff  here." 

They  had  their  second  drink,  and  then,  though 
Dan  evaded  another,  he  had  to  stand  by  while  Fry 
took  a  cocktail  preparatory  to  the  dinner  insisted 
upon. 

They  dined  amid  waiters  dutifully  bulldozed  by 
Fry  at  one  of  the  Broadway  restaurants  that  Dan 
had  long  wanted  to  enter  and  had  feared  because  of 
his  unfamiliarity  and  his  narrow  purse.  They  dined 
well.  Most  of  the  food  was  too  strange  to  Dan  for 
his  enjoyment,  and  the  least  strange  he  could  scarcely 
appreciate  because  of  his  appreciative  wonder  at  their 
surroundings.  But  he  made  an  effort  to  pose  as  one 
accustomed  to  all  these  things,  and  he  retained  his 
outward  calm  when  his  curious  eye  revealed  to  him 
the  appalling  size  of  the  bill  that  was  at  last  de- 
posited beside  Fry's  finger-bowl. 

Dan  believed  in  money.  He  could  not  help  be- 
lieving in  money;  its  making  and  its  spending:  money 
was  success,  and  success  was  the  test  of  worth.  He 
admired  Fry.  The  fellow's  features  seemed  to  have 
expended  all  their  powers  of  growth  before  they 
reached  the  task  of  making  a  chin;  the  bulging  fore- 
head, the  high  cheek-bones,  and  the  beak-nose  had  ex- 
hausted the  assigned  material,  but  Dan  forgot  these 
things  before  the  evidences  of  accomplishment  that 
accompanied  them.  Fry  was  loud,  too,  and  over- 
dressed, but  Dan  did  not  estimate  these  attributes  at 
their  true  valuation;  for  the  former  probably  com- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       165 

manded  success,  and  the  latter  was  success'  outward 
expression  in  one  of  the  few  forms  that  the 
metropolitan  comprehension  is  capable  of  under- 
standing. 

Even  when  they  strolled  toward  the  theater  that 
Fry  had  casually  suggested,  that  young  man  was 
strengthening  these  impressions. 

"Get  the  money!  Get  the  money!  Get  the 
money !  "  he  advised.  "  That's  the  trick.  Make  peo- 
ple believe  in  you.  It's  dead  easy:  talk.  You've 
got  to  put  up  a  front,  Dan,  my  son ;  nothing  else  goes. 
If  you'd  only  put  up  a  good  front,  how  long  do  you 
suppose  you'd  be  clerking  for  that  gang  of  yours  at 
less  than  nothing  a  week?  Not  three  days,  you 
wouldn't." 

Dan  remembered  the  revolutionary  counsel  of 
Gideon.  He  referred  to  it. 

"Poof!"  said  Fry.  "Bunch  of  cabbage-heads, 
those  fellows.  They  want  to  upset  the  whole  founda- 
tions of  business.  How  could  we  get  along  without 
business?  If  you  want  to  get  good  and  sick  of  re- 
form, join  the  City  Club." 

They  went  to  Koster  &  Rial's  music-hall,  which 
was  then  a  favorite  resort;  and  Dan  looked  fur- 
tively, yet  with  brightening  eyes,  at  its  bespangled 
women.  He  had  known  the  stage  from  the  peaks  of 
the  gallery,  but  never  so  close  as  this. 

All  the  while  Fry  kept  up  a  running  commentary 
upon  life.  Did  Dan  think  that  when  we  are  young 
we  demand,  as  our  right,  a  great  many  things,  most 
of  which  would  be  bad  for  us,  but  most  of  which  we 
never  get?  How  did  he  know,  since  he  had  never  got 
them  ?  The  world  moved ;  opinions  changed  in  these 


1 66      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

days,   and  only  the  man  that  believes   in  hell  de- 
serves it. 

Dan  listened  and  watched  the  women  on  the  stage. 

"  Business  and  a  good  time,"  said  Fry,  "  those  are 
the  things  that  count.  Only  don't  let  them  get  to- 
gether. They  don't  mix." 

Dan  had  managed  to  drink  almost  nothing,  and 
Fry  showed  none  of  the  results  of  drinking:  he  was 
his  normal  self,  cautious  even  with  what  he  loved 
best,  and  his  boisterous  geniality  was  his  best  caution. 

"  Now,"  said  Fry,  as  they  left  the  music-hall, 
"  we'll  have  one  nightcap  apiece,  and  then  I'll  leave 
you.  Got  to  get  up  to  Albany  early  to-morrow." 

They  went  into  a  brightly  lighted  barroom. 

"  Two  red-eyes,"  said  Fry. 

With  one  hand  the  white-coated  barkeeper  sent  a 
bottle  sliding  down  the  bar  to  them;  with  the  otherf 
he  sent  two  glasses  following. 

"  I  think  I'll  stick  to  beer,"  said  Dan. 

Fry  became  fatherly. 

"  Don't  do  it,"  he  advised.  "  Don't  you  do  it. 
Not  before  you  go  to  bed.  It's  the  worst  thing  you 
can  do." 

Dan  hesitated.  The  music  of  the  theater  and  the 
memory  of  the  dancing  women  were  fresh  in  his 
brain.  Besides,  Fry  must  know  much;  his  accom- 
plishment was  proof  sufficient. 

"  All  right,"  said  Dan. 

He  took  the  whisky  that  Fry  poured  for  him ;  and 
almost  as  soon  as  he  had  managed  to  curtail  the  im- 
pulse to  choke  that  came  over  him,  he  felt,  under  the 
ensuing  warmth,  a  great  change.  He  straightened 
his  shoulders.  He  looked  at  Fry  squarely.  He 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       167 

found  his  tongue  loosened  to  wonderful  thoughts  and 
his  spirit  high. 

"  Have  another  on  me,"  he  suggested. 

They  had  it,  and  life  became  sublimely  simple  to 
Dan.  He  knew  that  he,  too,  could  succeed.  He 
could  do  all  that  Fry  had  done. 

'  Just  one  more?  "  Dan  suggested. 

"  No,  thanks,"  said  Fry.  "  Got  to  be  going.  I'm 
glad  I  saw  you,  though."  He  put  out  his  hand  as 
they  reached  the  barroom  door.  "  I'll  look  you  up 
one  of  these  days.  So  long." 

His  grip  was  as  tight  as  it  had  been  when  they 
met,  but  Dan  proudly  noticed  that  it  no  longer  hurt 
him. 

§  2.  Then,  as  he  walked  along  under  the  lamps 
of  Broadway,  Dan  remembered  that  Fry  had  made 
no  further  reference  to  Irma. 

Well,  why  should  he  ?  The  girl  had  probably  told 
to  Fry  the  lie  that  she  had  told  to  Dan.  It  was  a 
lie;  it  must  have  been  a  lie.  Anyway,  it  had  availed 
with  Fry,  and  Fry  had  grown  wiser  and  resented  and 
left  her.  And  she  was  dead. 

So  far  as  she  was  concerned,  Dan  now  felt  sorry 
that  she  was  dead,  but  he  was  relieved  on  his  own 
account.  To  be  sure,  she  could  probably  never  again 
have  troubled  him,  but  now  the  probability  was  cer- 
tainty. After  all,  women  were  made  for  men's 
amusement.  It  was  not  their  fault.  Men  were  men 
and  women  were  women.  It  was  the  way  things 
were  ordered  in  this  world. 

A  girl  was  walking  slowly  toward  him.  As  she 
passed,  she  brushed  his  sleeve.  He  could  not  see 


1 68      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

her  face  because  of  the  shadow  of  her  leghorn  hat, 
but  under  the  hat  he  heard  her  humming. 

He  hesitated,  but  he  hesitated  too  late:  the  girl 
moved  on.  Dan  condemned  his  tardiness.  Powerful 
men  were  not  tardy;  next  time  he  would  be 
prompt. 

The  next  time  occurred  quickly.  Another  girl  a 
few  paces  ahead  was  looking  into  the  lighted  window 
of  a  men's  furnishing-shop.  She  glanced  at  Dan 
and  smiled. 

Dan  was  sure  that  she  was  not  so  pretty  as  her 
predecessor.  Her  face  was  thin  and  her  clothes 
rather  shabby.  He  was  beginning  to  notice  that  the 
night  had  grown  cold.  Still,  the  second  girl  had 
bright  cheeks  and  bright  eyes.  Dan  smiled,  too. 

He  had  passed  .the  girl  before  he  knew  what  he 
should  next  have  done,  and  he  was  so  annoyed  at  this 
that  he  did  not  observe  that  she  had  followed  him 
until  she  strode  ahead  of  him  and  was  turning  the 
nearest  corner.  He  bit  his  lip  vexatiously  and  then 
released  the  lip  to  smile  again,  for,  as  she  turned  the 
corner,  the  girl  looked  significantly  in  his  direction 
and  smiled  a  second  time. 

Dan  followed  into  the  darkened  cross-streets.  At 
first  he  was  afraid  that  the  girl  had  disappeared,  but 
an  instant  later  he  saw  her  walking  slowly  ahead  of 
him.  Unaccountably,  he  slackened  his  own  pace.  It 
was  very  chilly.  He  realized  that  he  did  not  know 
what  to  say.  ... 

The  girl  stopped. 

Dan  felt  that  he  must  not  turn  and  flee.  That 
would  be  a  treason  to  his  sex.  He  came  reluctantly 
forward. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      169 

"  Hello,  dear,"  said  the  girl.  She  spoke  as  if  she 
had  a  cold. 

Dan  raised  his  hat. 

"  Hello,"  he  said,  and  could  find  no  other  word. 

"  Where  you  goin'?  "  asked  the  girl. 

"  Home,"  said  Dan. 

"  Don't  you  want  to  take  a  little  walk?  " 

Dan  shook  his  head.  Why  did  he  shake  his  head? 
He  hated  himself  for  his  cowardice,  and  yet  he  heard 
himself  saying: 

"  It's  too  late  at  night." 

"  Aren't  you  out  for  a  good  time?  "  asked  the  girl. 

"  It's  too  late,"  repeated  Dan. 

"  Won't  cost  you  much,"  the  girl  pleaded. 

Dan  compromised. 

"  Are  you  around  here  every  night?  "  he  inquired. 

"  Sure,"  said  the  girl. 

"  Well,"  said  Dan,  "  to-morrow  night " 

The  girl  laughed  mirthlessly. 

"  I've  heard  that  before,"  she  said.    "  So  long." 

She  had  gone  before  he  well  knew  it.  He  was 
angry  with  himself  and  he  was  angry  with  her.  He 
wanted  to  follow,  but  he  saw  another  man  crossing 
the  street  toward  her  already  distant  figure. 

It  was  very  cold,  indeed.  He  hurried  back  to 
Broadway  and  jumped  on  an  approaching  car. 

§  3.  Passed,  tossing  on  the  pad  that  served  for  a 
cot-mattress  in  his  close  hall  bedroom,  that  night  was 
one  which  Dan  does  not  often  care  to  recall.  It 
began  with  an,  upbraiding  of  his  cowardice;  it  pro- 
ceeded to  a  hatred  of  women;  it  developed  into  a 
religious  ecstasy  in  which  he  thanked  God  for  his 


170      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

deliverance  from  sin;  it  continued  thence,  through 
thoughts  of  the  words  he  might  have  said  and  did 
not  say,  to  the  thoughts  of  the  thing  he  might  have 
done  and  did  not  do.  It  ended  in  the  habitual  im- 
mundicity  that  led  to  prostrate  penance  and  despair. 

Yet  he  had  not  been  in  the  office  for  an  hour  next 
day  before  he  was  mentally  where  he  had  been  when 
he  left  the  girl  of  the  street. 

He  heard  one  clerk  saying  to  another: 

"  Maybe  I  didn't  pick  up  a  peach  last  night." 

And  he  heard  the  other  answer: 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.     I  didn't  do  so  bad  myself." 

Dan  cursed  his  own  timidity.  He  wanted  to  be 
alone,  but,  at  the  moment  he  most  coveted  solitude, 
the  clerk  that  affected  desperate  waistcoats  took  him 
aside  to  tell  of  an  amazing  debauchery. 

The  process  was  too  rapid  for  analysis.  Dan  for- 
got, for  the  time,  that  feeling  of  loss  which  had  come 
to  him  after  he  mated  with  Irma.  His  sense  of 
deliverance  had  given  place  to  the  knowledge  that 
what  had  rescued  him  had  been  his  timidity,  and  that 
knowledge  assured  him  that  he  regretted  his  rescue. 
He  was  ashamed  of  his  rescue.  The  only  thing  of 
which  he  was  more  ashamed  was  the  shame  in  which 
his  solitary  reflections  of  the  night  before  had  ended. 
He  wanted  to  be  manly.  He  burned  with  the  sense 
of  how  his  fellow-employees  would  sneer  at  him  if 
they  knew  the  truth  about  him.  He  swore  that  he 
would  be  manly  at  any  price. 

§  4.  All  the  way  home  from  work,  he  held  the 
door  upon  his  fears,  whether  they  presented  them- 
selves in  their  own  guise  or  under  the  cloak  of  con- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       171 

ventional  morality.  He  even  thgught  of  getting  from 
the  car  as  he  passed  the  corner  on  which  the  girl  had 
paused  to  smile  at  him.  He  would  have  stopped 
there,  but  he  remembered  that  the  hour  was  far  too 
early. 

In  the  lamp-lighted  basement  of  his  boarding-house 
he  ate  sullenly.  He  looked  at  the  aenemic  faces  of 
his  table  companions  and  disliked  them.  He  specu- 
lated to  himself  about  the  men's  relations  with 
women,  and  he  wondered  which  one  of  the  three 
stenographers  opposite  would  that  night  yield  to  her 
employer. 

Then,  in  the  chills  of  fear  and  the  fever  of  reso- 
lution, he  walked  the  streets  until  ten  o'clock.  At 
ten  o'clock  he  was  tired  from  this  unwonted  exercise, 
but  he  drank  two  glasses  of  whisky  and  turned  to- 
ward the  corner  of  adventure.  As  he  left  the  saloon, 
he  was  triumphant  in  the  realization  that  desire  was 
actually  alight;  but  he  walked  fast  lest  there  should 
return  the  cold,  the  sinking,  that  had  before  betrayed 
him. 

At  the  window  of  the  men's  furnishing-shop  a  girl 
was  standing.  It  was  not  the  girl  of  his  previous  en- 
counter. This  girl  was  plump;  she  was  almost  fat, 
and  Dan,  like  most  young  men,  disliked  fat  women. 
Besides,  this  one  somehow  reminded  him  of  Pauline 


He  halted,  but  he  ended  by  saying  to  himself  that 
he  halted  not  because  the  girl  was  fat,  but  because 
his  cowardice  had  used  his  prejudice  against  fat  as  a 

convenient  avenue  of  attack.    He  went  forward  and 

»* 
raised  his  hat' 

"  Hello,  dear,"  he  said. 


172      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

The  girl  turned  slightly.  She  did  not  look  away 
from  the  window ;  but  Dan  saw  that  she  had  an  agree- 
able face  and  a  full  figure. 

"  Hello,"  said  she.    She  seemed  in  no  hurry. 

"  Where  are  you  going?  "  Dan  inquired. 

"  Nowhere." 

Dan  had  been  applauding  his  glibness.  Now  he 
realized  that  he  was  repeating  to  this  girl  just  the 
words  that  the  girl  of  last  night  had  used  to  him. 
Nevertheless,  he  doggedly  proceeded: 

"  Don't  you  want  to  take  a  little  walk?  " 

"  Sure,"  said  the  girl.     "  Come  on." 

She  seized  his  arm  in  a  tight  grasp,  pressing  it 
close  against  her.  She  assumed  something  of  an  air 
of  possession. 

Dan  looked  nervously  up  the  street  and  down;  he 
was  afraid  that  some  acquaintance  would  observe  him. 
Nobody,  however,  in  the  hurrying  street,  appeared 
at  all  to  regard  this  meeting  as  unusual.  Then  he 
looked  again  at  the  girl  and  pronounced  her  comely 
and  wished  that  some  of  his  fellow-clerks  might  pass. 

But  now  that  they  were  together,  the  girl  put  aside 
all  the  slow  indifference  with  which  she  had  begun 
their  interview.  She  was  very  much  in  a  hurry.  He 
asked  himself  why  she  was  in  a  hurry,  but  he  had 
to  be  babbling  in  inanities  the  while,  an3  he  found 
no  reply  when  they  paused  in  a  darkened  side-street 
before  a  dim  doorway. 

"  This  is  the  house,"  said  the  girl. 

"  Here?  "  asked  Dan,  stupidly. 

"  Yes." 


XI 


HE  had,  of  course,  in  looking  back  at  it,  his 
moments  of  reaction,  and  these  were  ugly. 
She  had  asked  him  for  "  the  money  first " : 
what  a  terrible  woman !  She  had  made  a  coarse  jest, 
and  Dan  had  tried  to  smile  at  it  in  order  to  hide  the 
tokens  of  the  shock  that  it  gave  him  to  hear  a  woman 
speak  in  this  way.  But,  as  he  remembered  that  she 
had  not  noticed  his  smile,  so  he  soon  came  to  under- 
stand that  she  would  probably  not  have  noticed  its 
absence.  The  girl  had  no  doubt  really  tried  to  be 
amusing:  she  had  hired  herself  for  a  purpose,  and 
she  considered  it  her  duty  to  do  her  work  and  make 
no  comment. 

Brains  discount  conventionality;  emotions  merely 
ignore  it.  Dan  argued  little.  He  was  no  more  in- 
trospective than  another  average  man.  He  had  first 
met  the  sex-problem  furtively  and  so  had  never 
had  a  chance  to  face  it  squarely.  He  held  his  head 
somewhat  higher  among  the  brokers'  clerks  and  re- 
served his  fits  of  religious  penitence  for  the  privacy 
of  his  own  hall-bedroom.  Then  repetition  increased 
the  assurance  arid  temporarily  reduced  the  contrition. 
His  early  habits  had  stimulated  his  appetite :  he  be- 
came entirely  manly. 

Notwithstanding  his  small  pay  and  mean  sur- 
roundings, the  spell  of  New  York  had  now  fastened 
upon  him.  He  loved  the  city.  He  loved  the  rush 

173 


174      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

of  Wall  Street  by  day  and  the  sweep  of  Broadway 
by  night.  At  one  time,  Manhattan  had  impressed 
him  like  a  tiger-cage  in  some  enormous  menagerie, 
and  its  greatest  thoroughfare  had  seemed  to  be  the 
track  along  which  the  caged  beasts  walked  up  and 
down,  back  and  forth,  in  the  untiring  restlessness  of 
captive  brutes.  But  now  he  began  to  glory  in  his 
captivity.  If  New  York  were  the  cage,  the  rest  of 
the  world  was  the  jungle.  A  New  Yorker  was  above 
all  the  beasts  of  the  field. 

Dan  felt  his  superiority.  He  felt  a  part  of  the 
great  forces  that  originated  so  near  to  him  and  gov- 
erned the  earth.  He  did  not  know  that  he  had  been 
carefully  prepared  to  become  a  victim  to  just  such  a 
change.  He  knew  only  that  rustic  codes  had  not  been 
made  for  metropolitan  conditions.  A  man's  course 
through  life  is  marked  by  the  dry  husks  of  his  cast-off 
opinions:  Dan  developed  logically. 

Physically,  he  was  growing  into  a  presentable  fig- 
ure. His  eyes,  blue  and  set  wide  apart,  by  no  means 
betrayed  him ;  his  hands,  large  like  his  mother's,  were 
well  formed  and,  since  he  had  come  to  the  city,  well 
looked  after.  His  lips  were  sensitive  and,  under  emo- 
tion, more  likely  to  change  color  than  his  cheeks. 
His  shoulders  were  broad,  and  he  was  beginning  to 
acquire  what  he  considered  the  New  York  manner. 

§  2.  It  was  not  until  some  time  after  the  Chicago 
World's  Fair  year  that  Dan  made  his  first  long  visit 
home,  and  that  visit  was  a  failure.  The  townspeople, 
as  sensitive  as  are  all  the  people  of  small  towns, 
resented  the  swagger  with  which  Dan,  in  his  very 
stride,  announced  himself  a  New  Yorker;  and  the 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       175 

young  man,  on  his  part,  discovered  that  Americus, 
far  from  being  the  paradise  that  he  had  once  re- 
gretted, was  little  and  dirty,  was  full  of  uninteresting 
and  uninterested  people,  was  shabby  and  dying  of 
dry-rot. 

Even  his  parents But,  no,  them  he  still  loved 

and  feared.  Of  course  they  could  not  understand  a 
city  product,  and  so,  of  course,  the  city  product  told 
them  no  more  than  it  was  good  for  them  to  know. 
Yet  respect  remained. 

They  were  not  much  changed.  He  assured  him- 
self of  that.  Save  for  the  slight  frosting  of  his  fa- 
ther's beard,  he  would  see  no  change  in  them  at  all. 
His  mother  stroked  his  hand  furtively  and,  accepting 
his  explanation  of  New  York  being  such  a  busy  place, 
forebore  to  rebuke  him  for  not  more  often  writing 
home.  His  father  seemed  rather  to  admire  Dan's 
distant  connection  with  the  large  enterprises  of  the 
large  city;  inquired  of  him  before  the  evening  crowd 
in  the  post-office  what  Watt  Street  thought  of  the 
new  Scotch  steel  magnate  from  Pittsburg,  and,  at 
home,  continued  to  administer  the  advice  on  which 
Dan  had  been  reared. 

Dan  pronounced  that  advice  sound.  Its  spiritual 
phases  he  had,  of  course,  long  since  negatived.  Its 
ethical  phases,  having  early  observed  wherein  Tom's 
precept  diverged  from  his  preaching,  the  son  had  de- 
cided upon  tempering  by  judicious  compromise  with 
the  order  of  things  as  they  really  were.  But  the  rest, 
the  hard  business  sense,  the  dicta  concerning  obedience 
to  authority  and  reverence  for  the  men  that  were  mak- 
ing his  country  the  greatest  industrial  nation  of  the 
world,  these  he  had  always  accepted  and  acted  upon. 


176      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  I  tell  you,  Dan,"  said  Tom,  one  evening,  "  these 
are  wonderful  times  we're  livin'  in,  an'  they're  goin' 
to  be  more  wonderful." 

Father  and  son  were  in  the  "  library  "  of  the  care- 
fully ordered  gray  house  in  Oak  Street,  its  walls 
hung  with  the  stiff  pictures  that  Tom  had  brought 
from  his  former  home.  Mrs.  Barnes  was  sewing 
silently  beside  a  lamp  upon  a  corner  table. 

"  More  wonderful,"  repeated  Tom. 

"  Yes,  sir,"  agreed  Dan,  leaning  forward,  chin  in 
hand.  "  I  think  so,  too." 

"  I've  just  been  readin'  one  of  those  magazines," 
continued  Tom,  "  where  there's  a  long  piece  praisin' 
our  Captains  of  Industry.  Nobody  that  reads  that 
can  take  much  stock  in  these  fellows  out  West  (regu- 
lar Anarchists,  they  are)  that  are  attackin'  the  great 
minds  of  America." 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  Dan  again. 

"  Mother,"  cautioned  Tom,  "  won't  you  just- 
straighten  that  chair  beside  you  there?  It's  crooked. 
Thank  you.  No,"  he  went  on,  stretching  his  long 
legs  comfortably  as  his  wife  obeyed  the  command  of 
his  passion  for  orderliness,  "  this  isn't  any  time  for 
criticism  of  our  great  minds.  No,  sir.  We  got  over 
that  sort  o'  thing  when  we  got  through  the  Recon- 
struction Period,  an'  I'm  glad  of  it.  There's  no  harm 
in  bein'  smart,  is  there?  An'  if  you're  smart,  you 
naturally  get  rich  from  it.  The  Bible  approves  o' 
that.  Yes,  sir.  Look  at  Solomon.  He  '  exceeded 
all  the  kings  o'  the  earth  for  riches  and  for  wis- 
dom.' " 

Dan  raised  his  right  shoulder.  He  was  always 
jjlad  to  keep  his  father  on  these  topics,  for,  though 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      177 

Tom  had  never  directly  recurred  to  the  Irma  episode, 
.Dan  feared  constantly  that  a  recurrence  was  possible. 

"  It's  mostly  the.  foreigners  that  make  trouble," 
said  he.  "  They're  a  low-down  lot." 

"They  are,"  Tom  assented;  "  an'  that's  the  only 
objection  I've  got  to  these  people  you're  workin' 
for." 

"O'Neill's  all  right,"  said  Dan;  "but  then,"  he 
added,  "  O'Neill  was  young  when  he  came  here." 

"  Hum,"  coughed  Tom.  "  I  guess  Silverstone  was, 
too.  But  don't  you  put  too  much  confidence  on  him. 
You  keep  your  eyes  open.  Make  friends  with  the  big 
customers,  the  men  of  affairs.  Work  hard  an'  be 
steady.  Be  steady."  His  hazel  eyes  shot  a  sidelong 
glance  at  his  son.  "  An'  if  you  know  any — any  peo- 
ple, be  sure  they're  nice  ones:  nice." 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  Dan  for  the  third  time.  He  knew 
that  his  father  was  approaching  the  subject  of  mar- 
riage, but  he  also  knew  that  his  father  would  ap- 
proach no  closer. 

On  the  whole,  this  conversation,  typical  of  their 
intercourse,  left  Dan  relieved.  He  was  relieved  to 
find  that  Tom,  whose  finances  suffered  from  the  com- 
mercial depression  that  followed  the  year  1893,  did 
not  mention  his  own  business  or  broach  the  question 
of  Dan's  entrance  thereon.  The  son  had  just  received 
an  advance  in.  salary;  he  was  hopeful  of  progress 
and  dreaded  the  thought  of  returning  to  Americus  to 
live.  Doubtless  the  old  man  had  seen  that  New 
York  was  the  best  place  for  the  young  one.  So  Dan, 
though  he  often  thought  that  his  father  might  be 
more  generous  with  the  occasional  remittances  that 
had  lately  been  sent,  let  well  enough  alone. 


1 78      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

/iTjX  The  next  ^me  ^  went  home  was  when  he 
was  ill.  Then  he  developed  a  mild  case  of  typhoid 
fever,  and  there  was  small  opportunity  for  business- 
conversation. 

It  was  on  this  visit,  during  his  first  slow  walk  out 
of  doors  alone,  that  he  one  day  passed  Pauline  Riggs. 
Her  figure  had  grown  stout  and  baggy.  Dan  did 
not  pause  to  look  at  her  face  or  to  speculate  about 
her  teeth.  He  crossed  the  street  to  avoid  her.  He 
wondered  how  she  could  once  have  attracted  him. 
He  heard  that  she  had  married  Mr.  Hostetter,  the 
blond  clerk  in  the  Barnes  store,  and  that  she  had 
already  borne  him  three  children. 

That  night  he  asked  his  mother  something  that 
he  would  not  have  asked  his  father. 

"  Mother,"  he  inquired,  "  do  you  ever  hear  any- 
thing of  the  Rents?  " 

Sarah  Barnes  did  not  raise  her  head  from  her 
sewing. 

"  No,"  she  answered.  "  The  last  we  heard  was 
two  years  ago.  Somebody  said  Mr.  Kent  had  lost 
his  position,  and  the  family  had  left  Phila- 
delphia." 

"  Hum,"  Dan  responded.  "  Somehow  I  just  hap- 
pened to  think  of  them  to-day  for  the  first  time  in 
ever  so  long." 

He  spoke  truthfully.  He  was,  just  at  this  period, 
scarcely  thinking  at  all  of  his  earlier  days.  When 
he  returned  to  New  York  a  week  later,  the  city  had 
never  seemed  more  seductive. 

§  4.  It  was  in  1896  that  Harold  Richardson  came 
to  work  in  the  offices  of  O'Neill  &  Silverstone. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       179 

The  elder  Richardson  was  a  frequent  visitor  there, 
carrying  a  large  and  active  account  that  was  chiefly 
in  Giddey's  care.  The  retired  merchant  used  often 
to  stop  by  Dan's  side  and  patronize  him.  One  day, 
looking  more  than  ever  like  Louis  Philippe,  Richard- 
son announced  that  he  had  taken  his  son,  now  twenty 
years  old,  from  college  and  was  placing  him  with 
the  brokers. 

"  He  proposes  to  read  law  in  his  leisure  time," 
said  Richardson,  fixing  Dan  with  his  round  and  sol- 
emn eyes,  "  and  I  am  well  satisfied  that  he  should 
come  here.  College  is  a  splendid  place,  Daniel,  but 
a  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing.  It  requires  to 
be  supplemented  by  a  knowledge  of  life.  The  dean 
of  my  son's  college  himself  writes  me  that  my  son 
would  profit  by  an  opportunity  to  rub  elbows  with  the 
real  world." 

Dan  murmured  assent. 

"  Yes,"  pursued  Mr.  Richardson.  He  grasped  the 
left  lapel  of  his  frock-coat  between  a  thumb  and  fore- 
finger, bent  his  head  above  it,  and,  with  drawn-down 
lips,  looked  over  his  round  cheeks  to  make  certain 
that  his  carnation  was  as  it  should  be.  "  Yes,  a  man 
is  known  by  the  company  he  keeps.  I  have  learned 
that  in  this  world  if  I  have  learned  nothing  else.  I 
have  had  my  son  brought  up  in  innocence.  As  a  boy 
he  associated  with  his  tutors.  As  a  student  I  in- 
structed him  to  associate  with  his  instructors.  Now 
that  he  is  soon  to  go  into  the  world  of  practicalities, 
I  believe  that  it  is  time  for  him  to  associate  with  prac- 
tical men." 

•Dan  was  glad  to  hear  of  the  new  clerk's  advent. 
He  had  always  thought  that  it  would  be  wise  for  him 


180      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

to  cultivate  the  Richardsons,  but  he  retained  enough 
of  his  rustic  diffidence  to  make  such  cultivation  ardu- 
ous. Now  he  thought  that  he  saw  his  chance. 

And  indeed  he  straightway  liked  Harold  for  Har- 
old's own  sake.  The  younger  Richardson  was  a 
round-faced,  dimpled  American,  not  so  tall  as  Dan, 
with  a  healthy  color,  faultless  clothes,  tremendous 
and  sophisticated  cheerfulness,  and  an  easy  manner 
that  Dan  immediately  envied  him.  Moreover,  he 
took  at  once  to  Dan. 

"  Erin  Go  Bragh  in  there  says  you're  to  put  me 
on  to  this  job,"  he  remarked  as,  on  his  introduction, 
he  stood,  short  and  plump,  before  Dan,  hands  deep 
in  his  pockets,  curly  head  tilted  back.  "  Well,  put 
away!  " 

"  Who  says  it?  "  asked  Dan. 

"  Old  Wearin'  of  the  Green.  What's  his  name?  " 
Harold  nodded  over  his  shoulder  toward  the  private 
office  of  the  firm.  "Daniel  O'Connell?  Brian 
Boru?" 

His  irreverence  appalled  and  charmed. 

uYou  mean  Mr.  O'Neill?"  asked  Dan  with  a 
grin. 

"  That's  the  cog,"  said  Harold. 

Dan  began  explaining  the  not  intricate  duties  of 
a  broker's  clerk. 

"Margins?"  Harold  presently  interrupted. 
"  Now,  do  tell  me  what  margins  are.  I've  always 
wanted  to  know.  I'll  bet  you  a  ten-spot  you  can't 
make  me  understand." 

It  was  pleasant  thus  to  be  appealed  to  by  a  student 
from  one  of  the  larger  colleges.  Dan  entered  upon 
an  operose  explanation,  in  the  midst  of  which  it  oc- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       181 

curred  to  him  that  perhaps  this  newcomer  was  merely 
guying  him. 

"  But  you  must  know  this/'  he  broke  off.  "  You 
must  have  got  it  all  in  college." 

"  Not  me,"  responded  Harold,  airily.  "  I  was 
jugged  too  quick." 

It  was  as  if  this  fellow  spoke  an  alien  language. 

"  What's  jugged?  "  asked  Dan. 

"Fired;  thrown  out;  requested  to  leave  my  alma 
mater  for  my  alma  mater's  good.  Not  that  I  loved 
my  college  less,  but  myself  more." 

"  But  your  father  said " 

"  Oh,  don't  you  mind  the  governor!  " 

"Mind  who?"  Dan  had  heard  the  term  thus 
employed  on  the  stage,  but  never  in  real  life. 

4  The  governor,  my  governor;  father,  you  know. 
He's  all  right,  but  he's  just  a  figure  of  speech.  Now 
don't  you  ask  me  what  a  figure  of  speech  is.  A  figure 
of  speech  is  a  man's  wife  when  he  gets  home  at 


2  A.M." 


§  5.  They  cemented  one  of  those  close  and  rapid 
friendships  to  which  the  male  human  being  is  liable 
from  the  time  he  loses  his  susceptibility  to  croup 
until  the  time  he  gains  a  susceptibility  to  apoplexy. 
Dan's  charm  for  Harold  in  part  lay  probably  in  the 
elder's  still  remaining  rawness  to  New  York;  in  part 
lay  certainly  in  the  younger's  natural  love  of  an  ad- 
miring audience.  For  Dan,  on  the  other  hand,  Har- 
old's attraction  was  manifold:  Harold  was  his  fa- 
ther's son;  he  was  an  avenue  of  advancement;  he 
was  the  ready  pattern  of  a  gentleman;  he  had  Ly- 
sander  Fry's  attitude  toward  life  without  certain  of 


1 82      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Fry's  qualities  that  Dan  now  perceived  were  super- 
erogatory. Moreover,  Harold  possessed  the  wit  and 
the  looks  that  pass  among  men  as  suitable  substitutes 
for  truth  and  purity,  and  that  most  women  accept 
from  such  men  at  the  masculine  valuation. 

The  pair  were  one  Saturday  afternoon  walking  up 
Broadway.  When  Harold  studied  law  was  something 
of  a  mystery:  he  manifestly  did  not  study  it  in  the 
evenings  or  on  Saturday  afternoons. 

"  I  suppose  I'll  learn  it  in  the  way  I  learn  most 
things,"  Harold  was  saying:  "  by  a  sort  of  miracle." 

"Perhaps,"  Dan  assented;  "  only,"  he  added,  "I 
don't  believe  in  miracles." 

"  I  do,"  declared  Harold.  "  This  day's  a  mira- 
cle. Every  clear  autumn  day  in  New  York  is.  And 
look  at  those  telegraph  wires.  The  telegraph's  a 
miracle.  Some  time  they'll  be  sending  telegrams 
through  the  air  without  wires,  and  that  will  be  a 
bigger  miracle  still." 

"  I'll  believe  that  when  I  see  it,"  said  Dan. 

"  But  you  won't  see  it  when  it  happens,"  his  com- 
panion objected.  "  You  can't  see  a  telegraphic  mes- 
sage when  it  goes  over  the  wires  now.  Nobody  be- 
lieved in  telegraphy  before  it  happened,  yet  here  it 
is,  a  miracle:  it  can  circle  the  earth  as  quickly  as  I 
can  circle  a  big  girl's  waist."  His  round  eyes  were 
caught  by  a  slim  advancing  figure.  "  And  speaking 
of  waists "  he  began. 

Dan  found  that  they  were  face  to  face  with  Gideon 
Giddey's  daughter. 

She  had  grown;  but  her  manner  had  no  taint  of 
the  awkward  age.  Her  jacket  was  open,  showing  her 
firm  throat  rising  from  the  collar  of  such  a  shirt  as 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       183 

she  had  been  wearing  on  the  evening  of  Dan's  visit  to 
her  father's  flat.  The  curling  black  hair  parted  in 
the  center  of  a  low  forehead,  the  clear  cheeks  tinged 
with  a  faint  pink,  the  oval  outline  of  the  face:  these 
things  were  the  same.  The  same,  too,  yet  even  more 
compellingly  certain  of  life  were  the  pure  mouth  and 
the  clear  gray  eyes. 

She  stopped  before  them  and  took  Dan's  waver- 
ing hand  in  her  strong  clasp. 

"  You  have  never  come  back,"  she  said. 

Dan  was  fumbling  with  the  hat  that  he  held  in 
his  free  hand. 

"  No,"  he  said;  "  you  see— I " 

Harold  nudged  him. 

"What?" 

"  You  might  introduce  me,"  said  Harold,  and  then, 
smiling  at  the  girl :  "  He's  probably  ashamed  of  me, 
but  I'm  not  at  all  ashamed  of  myself:  my  name  is 
Richardson." 

Madge  shook  hands. 

"  I  am  Madge  Giddey,"  said  she. 

At  once  they  fell  to  talking. 

"  Giddey?  Giddey?  "  repeated  Harold.  "  Why, 
in  our  office  there's  a  splendid  old  gentleman " 

"  My  father." 

"  What?    And  Barnes  never  told  me!  " 

"  I  dare  say,-  Mr.  Richardson.  I'm  afraid  Mr. 
Barnes  found  us  dull." 

Dan  made  a  frantic  effort : 

"  I  did  not!" 

"  But  then-. — "  began  Madge. 

And  the  chance  conversation  ran  on.  Madge 
spoke  with  the  simple  directness  that  made  Dan 


1 84      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

gasp.  As  for  Harold,  his  manner  of  talk  was  always 
the  manner 'of  the  highwayman:  he  was  continually 
lying  in  ambush ;  he  never  came  out  of  it  save  for  an 
assault  upon  such  passersby  as  unconsciously  laid 
themselves  open  to  easy  attack. 

Dan  heard  Madge  say: 

"  I  think  that  what  bored  Mr.  Barnes  was  fa- 
ther's talking  of  his  hobby." 

"  How  narrow  of  Mr.  Barnes!  "  Harold  rejoined. 
"  What  is  a  hobby  for  if  not  to  be  talked  of?  " 

"  But  you  see  Mr.  Barnes  believes  in  things  as  they 


are." 


"  And  your  father  doesn't?  " 

"  Not  at  all." 

Harold  laughed  his  careless,  dimpling  laugh. 

"  No  more  do  I,"  he  declared;  "  nof  one  of  them." 

Her  eyes  were  serious. 

"You  mean  that?" 

"  As  much  as  it  is  polite  to  mean  anything." 

Madge  turned  slightly  toward  Dan  in  order  to 
include  him  in  her  invitation. 

"  Then  perhaps,"  she  suggested,  "  you  two  would 
enjoy  our  club.  It  is  too  frivolous  for  father,  but  not 
frivolous  enough  for  most  people.  Will  you  come?  " 

"  Even  if  it's  west  of  the  Hudson,"  vowed 
Harold. 

"It  isn't  west;  it's  far  east."  She  gave  him  the 
address  of  a  cafe  on  lower  Third  Avenue.  "  We 
have  a  room,"  she  explained :  "  some  men  and  women, 
on  the  second  floor.  There  is  always  somebody  there 
for  dinner  and  talk.  If  I  am  away,  just  tell  them  that 
I  sent  you." 

"  But  you  must  be  there!  "  said  Dan. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      185 

"  I  often  am." 

"  To-night?"  asked  Harold. 

She  shook  her  head: 

"  I  shall  be  busy." 

"  To-morrow  night?  " 

"  Nor  to-morrow  night.  I  can't  tell.  I  am  never 
sure  beforehand,  but  I  am  generally  there  on  Wednes- 
days and  Fridays." 

'  You  must  be  a  frightfully  engaged  person." 

"  At  any  rate,"  said  Madge,  "  I  have  an  engage- 
ment now."  She  put  out  her  hand.  "  Good-by,"  she 
said. 

§  6.  The  young  men  stood  looking  after  her  as 
she  walked  away. 

Harold's  lips  puckered  to  a  whistle. 

"  A  regular  free-stone  peach,"  he  declared.  He 
slapped  Dan  smartly  on  the  back.  "  And  you  never 
tipped  me  off !  " 

"  She's  only  a  kid,"  said  Dan,  characteristically 
raising  his  right  shoulder. 

"  She's  only  a  wonder!  Do  you  mean  to  say  that 
such  a  girl  can  be  the  daughter  of  that  old  relic  of 
the  Stone  Age  down  at  O'Neill  &  Silverstone's  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  nodded  Dan,  with  a  smile. 

"  Why,  the  man's  a  fossil !  " 

"  He's  worse  than  that:  he's  a  Socialist." 

Again  Harold  whistled. 

"Honest?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Believes  in-it?" 

"  He  says  he  does,  and  at  home  he  talks  fast 
enough  to  make  you  think  so." 


1 86      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  I'll  bet  he  wouldn't  bet  on  it,"  said  Harold. 

This  was  conclusive.  Why  should  anyone  refuse 
to  make  a  wager  save  for  the  dread  of  losing  it? 

"  And  he's  teaching  it  to  his  daughter,"  persisted 
Dan:  "Socialism  and  Anarchy  and  all  that  sort  of 
rot." 

He  was  sullen  because  he  thought  that  he  had 
shown  to  small  advantage  in  the  conversation  with 
Madge;  but  Harold  mistook  the  cause  of  this  sullen- 
ness.  As  the  pair  turned  into  a  barroom,  the  younger 
asked  : 

"  She's  not  been  turning  you  down,  has  she?  " 

"  What  about?  "  Dan  inquired,  and  his  wide  blue 
eyes  searched  Harold's. 

"  Well,"  said  Harold,  grinning  cynically,  "  of 
course  it  might  be  about  marriage ;  bu**  I  don't  think 
it  was." 

Still  Dan  failed  to  follow  him. 

"  Marriage?  That  child?  What  do  you  think  I 
am?  And,  anyhow,  I  haven't  the  money  to 
marry." 

Harold,  with  a  careless  laugh,  swung  down  this 
verbal  line  of  least  resistance. 

"  There  ought  to  be  two  versions  of  the  same 
proverb  about  that,"  he  said:  "  One  would  be  that 
some  men  are  born  to  be  married,  some  achieve  mar- 
riage, and  more  than  you  suppose  have  marriage 
thrust  upon  them.  And  the  other?  Dead  easy! 
Some  men  are  born  rich,  some  achieve  riches,  and 
some  marry  the  girl  with  the  tin." 

They  were  standing  at  the  bar. 

"  Madge  Giddey  hasn't  a  cent,"  said  Dan,  "  and 
never  will  have.  Besides,  she  isn't  brought  up  right. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       187 

Even  when  she's  old  enough  for  marriage,  no  fellow 
will  want  to  marry  her.n 

"  Why  not?" 

"  She's  not  safe  to  marry;  she  knows  too  much." 
'  Too  much?    Of  course,  I've  never  been  married 
to  any  great  extent,  but  I  should  think  that  marriage 
was  a  profession  in  which  you  couldn't  know  too 
much." 

"  Oh,  you  understand  what  I  mean,"  said  Dan. 

"  A  little  rapid?  "  Harold  suggested. 

Dan  twisted  his  long  body  nervously. 

"  No-o,"  he  explained,  with  a  flashing  memory  of 
his  old  dreams  and  his  old  ideals  of  what  marriage 
ought  to  be.  "  Only  somehow  a  decent  girl's  mind 
ought  to  be  like  her  body." 

So  they  fell  to  talking  of  what  two  men  at  a  bar 
are  sure  sooner  or  later  to  talk  of. 

§  7.  Harold,  however,  was  not  a  young  person  to 
allow  the  offer  of  new  experiences  to  go  long  unac- 
cepted. He  said  little  more,  just  then,  to  Dan  about 
Madge;  he  even  declined  Dan's  suggestion  that  they 
visit  the  club  of  which  Madge  had  spoken;  but  he 
quietly  made  friends  with  Gideon,  and  before  long 
was  a  not  infrequent  caller  at  the  Giddey  flat.  Dan's 
hints  of  what  was  to  be  discovered  there  had  inter- 
ested Richardson,  and  what  he  did  discover  there 
interested  him  more. 


XII 


HAROLD  had  been  brought  up  much  as  his 
father  indicated  and  not  at  all  as  his  father 
supposed.  Tutors  had  first  kept  him  from 
association  with  boys  of  his  own  age  and  forced  his 
brain  as  a  simple  plant  is  often  forced  by  floral  en- 
thusiasts into  abnormal  maturity.  Then,  at  a  large 
private  boarding-school,  there  had  followed  a  close 
association  with  elder  lads,  for  which  he  was  wholly 
unprepared  and  from  which  he  contracted  much  the 
same  habits  as  had  Dan.  Finally,  at  college  the 
granting  of  a  freedom  that  Harold  had  been  elabo- 
rately unfitted  for  mounted  to  his  head,  and  he  had, 
in  an  amazingly  brief  time,  obtained  an  acquaintance 
with  the  vexed  subject  of  life  just  as  mistaken  as 
Dan's,  and  far  wider. 

Younger  than  Barnes  in  years,  but  older  In  sophis- 
tication, Harold's  was  not  the  sort  of  soul  that  finds 
this  a  dull  world.  "  On  our  imperfect  earth,"  he 
was  wont  to  reflect,  "  the  fool  at  least  has  plenty 
of  company."  So  he  used  often  to  sit  in  Giddey's 
book-crowded  parlor,  listening  to  the  bald-headed, 
sharp-faced  father,  and  gazing  at  the  clear-eyed 
daughter,  saying  little  to  the  latter,  egging  the  former 
with  exaggerated  objections  derived  from  the  more 
moderate  phases  of  his  own  creed,  and  with  the 
offers  of  impossible  wagers  that  were  never  accepted. 

"  The  trouble  with  you  philosophers,"  he  one 
evening  observed,  "  is  that  you're  not  practical." 

188 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      189 

"Hey?"  said  Giddey. 

"Practical!"  shouted  Harold.  "I'll  bet  you  a 
thousand  dollars  none  of  you  are  practical." 

"  Not  patriotic?  "  piped  the  deaf  man. 

"  Not  practical,"  corrected  Harold. 

But  Giddey,  finally  hearing  well  enough,  had  al- 
ready prepared  an  answer  to  the  objection  that  he 
had  at  first  supposed  to  be  offered. 

"  Don't  talk  to  me  about  patriotism,"  he  snapped 
shrilly.  "Loyalty  to  country,  indeed!  Loyalty  to 
the  accident  of  birth !  Fidelity  to  the  accidentals  of 
existence  is  treason  to  its  essentials.  Patriotism  is 
only  selfishness  raised  to  the  nth  power  and  extended 
to  the  limits  set  by  imaginary  lines." 

"  All  right,"  said  Harold,  for  whom  one  subject 
was  as  good  as  another;  "but  you  radicals  don't  go 
far  enough.  The  real  radical  is  the  true  conserva- 
tive." 

Giddey  blinked  behind  his  gleaming  spectacles. 
He  seemed  to  be  peculiarly  deaf  to-night. 

"  Not  constructive?  " 

"  Too  conservative." 

"Well,  what  is  constructive?"  persisted  Giddey. 
"  Surely  not  the  class  that  is  now  in  power.  It  has 
done  all  the  construction  necessary  for  itself;  it  wants 
merely  to  sit  tight  on  the  top  of  the  thing  it  has  built, 
and  the  thing  'it  has  built  is  wrong.  So,  if  neither 
side  is  constructive,  you  have  to  choose  between  the 
force  that  would  tear  down  the  wrong  and  the  force 
that  would  maintain  it.  That  is  why  I  am  for  de- 


struction." 


"  I    tell    you    you're    a    conservative,"    repeated 
Harold. 


1 90      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Madge,  seated  on  a  pile  of  books  at  Giddey's  side, 
laughingly  interpreted. 

"  He  calls  you  a  conservative,  father,"  she  said  in 
a  tone  that,  without  any  appreciable  raising  of  the 
voice,  always  reached  Gideon's  ears. 

"  Poof!  "  snorted  Giddey,  who  had  not  wanted  to 
hear.  "  He  doesn't  know  the  meaning  of  the  term." 

"  Don't  I?  "  Harold  retorted.  "  I'll  bet  you  five 
hundred  I  do.  My  father's  a  conservative — of  a 
different  sort.  All  parents  are  conservative.  I'll 
tell  you  what  conservatism  is :  conservatism  is  parent- 
hood." 

He  was  maliciously  leading  Giddey  to  another  of 
his  hobbies.  Consequently,  Harold  was  not  surprised 
that  the  old  man  should  this  time  hear  clearly. 

"  Conservatism  is  not  parenthood,"  said  Gideon^, 
"because  conservatism  begets  nothing;  but  every 
modern  parent  is  a  conservative.  Lies,  misdirection, 
ignorance !  There  is  the  life  of  the  average  father 
and  mother  for  you.  Bah !  That  sort  of  thing  isn't 
parenthood:  it  is  simply  moral  dyspepsia.  It  brings 
up  children  to  be  husbands  that  are  either  blunderers 
or  roues,  and  wives  that  are  either  prostitutes  or 
slaves.  What  is  it  that  is  taught  the  husband  as  his 
first  duty?  That  he  must  keep  his  wife." 

"  Sure,"  said  Harold,  puffing  a  cigarette;  "pos- 
session is  nine  points  of  the  law :  when  you've  got  her 
you've  got  to  keep  her." 

"  Whereas,"  interpolated  Madge  from  her 
strangely  mature  calm,  "  if  marriage  is  anything  it 
is  a  partnership." 

Harold  shot  her  another  swift  glance.  He 
thought  her  uncommonly  beautiful. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       191 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  he  submitted,  "  but, 
except  for  such  girls  as  you,  Miss  Giddey,  if  mar- 
riage really  is  a  partnership,  it  isn't  the  woman  that 
is  the  silent  partner." 

Of  course  this  family  misunderstood  him;  of 
course  he  had  no  clear  understanding  of  himself. 
The  Giddeys  were  in  the  habit  of  using  speech  to 
convey  something  that  they  believed;  but  to  Harold 
conversation  was  nothing  more  than  a  method  of  be- 
ing pleasant. 

He  wanted  to  be  especially  pleasant  to  Madge. 
He  so  much  liked  to  know  her  that  he  wanted  to  know 
her  better  and  to  make  her  like  him.  He  liked  her 
oval  face  and  serious  eyes,  her  low  forehead  and 
parted  hair;  he  liked  her  ease  of  manner  that  was 
neither  flippant  nor  shrinking,  and  he  liked  her  bowed 
mouth  and  the  low  voice  that  came  from  it.  With 
her  mind  he  did  not  especially  concern  himself,  the 
opinion  of  his  world  being  one  that  failed  to  attribute 
intelligence  to  women;  but  concerning  the  effects  of 
her  father's  frankness  upon  her  character,  Harold 
could  not  but  occasionally  speculate  toward  the  con- 
clusion that,  in  the  circumstances,  was  natural  to  one 
of  his  class.  Definite  he  was  not,  because  definite  in 
those  days  he  rarely  was  about  anything;  yet,  if  the 
conclusion  remained  ahead,  it  bulked  large  enough  to 
rise  high  above  the  horizon  of  that  mental  landscape 
across  which  he  was  proceeding. 

§  2.  "  I  notice  you  and  old  Giddey  seem  to  be 
getting  pretty  friendly  at  the  office,"  Dan  one  day 
remarked  to  Harold. 

In   his  endeavor  to  obtain   desired   information, 


192      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Barnes  adopted  a  teasing  tone  for  a  subject  that 
might  prove  delicate. 

Harold  laughed  unquietly. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know,"  he  said.  "  Gideon's  a  Mar- 
tini Cocktail." 

Some  hint  from  his  discomfort  illuminated  Dan. 

"  And  his  daughter?  "  asked  Barnes. 

"Madge?"  Harold  blushed  warmly.  "She's 
champagne." 

"  So  you  see  her?  "  Dan  pursued. 

"  Once  or  twice  I've  seen  her." 

"And  like  her?" 

"  I  said  she  was  champagne.     I  like  champagne." 

"  I  see,"  said  Dan,  sagely,  recalling  what  Harold 
had  formerly  said  to  him.  "  Well,  I  don't  suppose 
the  old  man  saves  anything;  but  he's  an  honest  fel- 
low. He  has  personal  charge  of  your  father's  ac- 
count now,  and  I've  heard  your  father  say  that 
Giddey's  word  is  as  good  as  his  bond." 

Harold  regarded  his  companion  narrowly. 

"  What  are  you  getting  at?  "  he  asked.  "  Do  you 
think  I'm  thinking  about  marriage?  You  have  an- 
other guess  coming  to  you.  It's  all  very  well  to 
choose  a  girl  whose  father's  word  is  as  good  as  his 
bond ;  but  you've  got  to  be  sure  that  he  has  the  bonds. 
Old  Giddey  hasn't  one  to  his  name." 

Dan  became  confusedly  apologetic.  His  wide  eyes 
turned  quickly  from  their  former  frank  scrutiny. 

"  Never  mind  that,"  interrupted  Harold,  "  but 
don't  talk  to  me  about  marriage.  Nobody  buys  a 
hen  when  he  can  steal  eggs." 

§  3.     He  was  getting  on  at  the  Giddeys',  though 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       193 

as  to  just  to  what  point  he  was  tending  he  did  not 
inquire  of  himself.  There  was  one  day  in  the  office 
when  he  asked  if  he  might  take  Madge  to  the  theater. 

"  You  won't  mind,  will  you?  "  he  said  to  Giddey. 

"Mind?"  repeated  Gideon,  though  he  was  no 
more  deaf  that  day  than  he  usually  was  when  he 
forgot  himself. 

"  Of  course  if  you'd  care  to  go  along "  began 

Harold. 

"  I  never  go  to  the  theater,"  said  Giddey.  "  I 
can't  hear,  and  I  have  too  much  reading  to  do  and 
too  little  time  to  do  it  in." 

"  Then  we  may  go  alone?  " 

"  Of  course  you  may." 

"You  really  don't  mind?" 

"Why  should  I?" 

Harold,  to  his  surprise,  found  it  somewhat  difficult 
to  supply  the  reason  that,  a  few  moments  earlier, 
had  seemed  to  him  so  obvious. 

"  I  was  simply  thinking  of  the  great  chaperon 
myth,"  he  explained. 

"  If  my  daughter  can't  behave  herself  without  a 
keeper,"  said  Giddey,  "  she  had  better  be  honest  and 
misbehave.  There  is  no  virtue  in  compulsion." 

"  I  see.     Oh,  yes;  I  see.     Of  course  you're  right." 

"  Of  course  I  am.     Where  are  you  going?  " 

"  Well,  Lknow  you  wouldn't  want  her  to  go  to  a 
musical  comedy,  Mr.  Giddey." 

"  I  wouldn't — merely  because  musical  comedy  is 
not  musical  and  not  comedy." 

"  So  I  thought  that  something  more  serious " 

Giddey  smiled  grimly. 

"  All  right,"  he  said;  "  don't  be  afraid  to  mention 


i94      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

it.  To  see  you,  one  would  think  that  there  was  a 
theater  in  New  York  that  had  at  last  found  the 
courage  to  produce  the  real  Ibsen." 

"  Oh,  no,  not  Ibsen,"  protested  Harold. 

"  Then  what?" 

"  Well,  there's  Sothern  in  *  An  Enemy  to  the 
King.'  " 

Giddey  flung  up  his  thin  hands. 

"  Get  out!  "  he  cried.     "  Go  back  to  your  work!  " 

"  But,  Mr.  Giddey " 

"  Go  back  to  your  work!  " 

"  But  I  have  seen  the  play,  and  I  assure  you  that 
there  is  nothing  in  it  that ' 

"  There  is  nothing  in  it  at  all,"  said  Giddey.  "  I 
know  so  much  from  reading  the  reviews.  "  Noth- 
ing but  dainties  for  debutantes  and  bon-bons  for 
boarding  schools.  It's  immoral.  How  dare  you 
suggest  taking  my  daughter  to  such  a  thing?  " 

He  glared  at  Harold  through  his  thick  spectacles, 
and  then  suddenly  began  to  smile  again. 

'  There's  a  performance  of  '  Therese  Raquin ' 
over  at  the  Yiddish  Theater,"  he  concluded.  "  You 
take  Madge  there.  It  may  profit  your  ignorant 
sophistication." 

§  4.  At  last,  however,  the  point  toward  which 
Harold  and  Madge  were  tending  was  reached.  Only 
a  few  evenings  after  Dan  had  inquired  of  Harold 
concerning  the  Giddeys,  the  younger  Richardson, 
having  heard  his  father  say  that  Gideon  was  to 
come  to  the  Richardson  house  that  night  to  go  over 
some  accounts,  found  himself  ringing  at  the  door  of 
the  Giddey  flat. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       195 

Madge  appeared  clad  in  a  long  kimona  of  dark 
blue  figured  with  pawing  dragons  in  green. 

"  Father's  not  at  home,"  she  said  before  it  was 
necessary  for  Harold  to  insinuate  a  lie  by  inquiring 
for  Gideon. 

Even  then  it  was  on.  Harold's  lips  to  pretend  igno- 
rance; but  he  always  found  it  hard  to  lie  to  Madge. 

"  I  know  it,"  he  said.  u  He's  out  at  our  place, 
isn't  he?" 

"  Yes.     You  did  know,  didn't  you?  " 

"  I  knew,  but  I  thought  perhaps  you  might  let 
me  come  to  see  you  anyhow." 

She  smiled  frankly. 

"  Of  course,"  she  said,  "  if  you  care  to.  It  never 
occurred  to  me  that  you  would  care  just  to  talk  to 


me." 


"Miss  Giddey!" 

"  No,  it  didn't.  That  is  why  I  wasn't  more  hos- 
pitable." She  flung  the  door  wide.  "  Come  in," 
she  said. 

He  followed  her  down  the  narrow  hall  where  the 
draft  from  beyond  blew  the  folds  of  her  kimona 
against  him,  into  the  lamp-lighted  parlor  with  its 
rows  of  books  upon  the  shelves  and  its  piles  of  books 
upon  the  floor.  The  green-shaded  lamp  on  the  lit- 
tered table  cast  only  a  narrow  circle  of  light.  Har- 
old, digging  a  place  for  himself  in  the  shadow, 
breathed  deeply  as  he  saw  the  girl  curl  up  in  the 
Morris-chair  well  within  the  sphere  of  illumina- 
tion. 

"  You're  Jiot  afraid  to  be  up  here  at  the  top  of 
the  house  all  alone?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  have  not  had  to  try  it  very  often,"  she  an- 


196      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

swered,  raising  her  even  brows — "  but  afraid?  Why 
should  I  be  afraid?" 

Harold  waved  his  hand. 

"  Burglars,  sneak-thieves,  all  that  sort  of  thing." 

"  No,"  she  said.  "  There  is  nothing  here  to  at- 
tract them." 

14  They  would  have  to  come  first,"  he  amended, 
"  to  find  that  out." 

"  I  suppose  they  would;  and  I  suppose  I  should 
be  afraid  if  I  ever  thought  about  them,  but,"  she 
added,  smiling,  "  you  see  I  never  do." 

There  was  no  mistaking  her  sincerity. 

u  By  George !  "  applauded  Harold.  "  You're  all 
right.  A  girl  and  not  afraid !  But  I  think  you  miss 
something." 

"  Why  should  a  girl  be  more  of  a  coward  than  a 
man?" 

"  Oh,  she's  not,"  Harold  hastened  to  explain. 
"  It's  only  that  she  has  more  to  be  afraid 
of." 

"  What?  "  asked  Madge,  clasping  her  hands  across 
a  raised  knee. 

Harold  looked  at  her,  startled;  but  he  lowered  his 
gaze  from  her  honest  eyes,  and  saw  only  how  white 
and  graceful  were  her  half-bared  arms  against  the 
dark  silk  of  the  kimono. 

"  Lots  of  things,"  he  answered,  nervously.  "  But 
I  say  you  miss  something:  the  luxury  of  fear,  you 
know.  I  assure  you,  the  human  soul's  education  is 
not  complete  without  it." 

"  Perhaps  that  is  true,"  said  Madge.  Her  gray 
eyes  were  reflective ;  she  had  a  startling  way  of  taking 
him  at  his  word.  "  At  any  rate,  I  suppose  fear 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      197 

comes  to  us  all  at  some  time.  I  suppose  I  shall 
be  afraid  when  I  have  a  child." 

Harold  jumped  in  his  chair. 

"Eh?"  he  ejaculated. 

"  But  that  is  the  result  of  civilization,"  the  girl 
pursued,  her  gaze  still  reflectively  fixed  on  a  remote 
corner  of  the  room  behind  him.  "  There  are  times 
when  I  wonder  whether  civilization  is  really  pro- 
gression, at  least  so  far  as  our  bodies  are  con- 
cerned." 

Harold  coughed.  He  knew  that  he  was  awkward, 
and  he  was  unused  to  being  awkward.  To  speak 
openly  of  these  things  with  a  laugh  to  all  men,  and 
to  speak  of  them  to  some  women  in  veiled  and 
smiling  allusions,  was  his  habit.  He  had  even  grown 
used  to  mentioning  them  to  Giddey  before  Madge, 
but  to  have  the  girl  speak  of  them  to  him,  and  when 
she  was  alone  with  him,  quite  took  his  breath  away. 
He  was  relieved  when  she  changed  the  subject  by 
asking : 

"  So  men  really  are  afraid,  are  they?  " 

"  Every  man  is  always  afraid  of  something,"  he 
eagerly  responded.  "  Fright  is  the  motive  for  all 
things.  You  know  the  French  proverb  that  it  is  love 
that  makes  the  world  go  round  ?  Well,  there's  noth- 
ing in  that.  What  makes  the  world  go  round  is 
fear." 

He  was  smiling  so  broadly  in  his  relief  that  even 
she  could  not  accept  his  words  at  their  face  value. 
Her  own  smile  answered  his  and  showed  her  teeth, 
even  and  firm  and  bright. 

"  Are  you  afraid?  "  she  inquired. 

"  All  the  time,"  he  assured  her. 


i98      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"Of  what?" 

"  Ah,  that's  just  it :  of  the  things  I'm  afraid  my 
friends  may  learn  about  me." 

"And  Mr.  Barnes,  too?" 

"  Oh,  Barnes !  "  Harold  tossed  his  curly  head  in 
a  manner  to  indicate  that  Dan's  sins  held  Barnes  in 
complete  bondage,  a  subject  to  which  Harold  had 
theretofore  devoted  no  thought  whatever.  "  Barnes 
is  precisely  like  the  rest  of  us:  not  black  and  not 
white,  but  a  decided  gray."  He  stopped.  "  You'll 
think  us  rather  wicked,"  he  said. 

She  was  serious  enough  again.  She  turned  to- 
ward him  her  full  face,  pink  and  oval  and  earnest. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  only  rather  foolish." 

"  I  know,"  said  Harold.     "  Mind  if  I  smoke?  " 

"Why  should  I?" 

"  Eh?  No,  of  course  not."  He  got  up,  lighted 
a  cigarette,  and  began  to  wander  aimlessly  about  the 
room,  stooping  now  and  then  before  the  shelves,  and 
pretending  to  read  the  title  of  some  book  that  he 
could  not  see. 

"  It's  such  a  waste,"  Madge  continued,  but  as  if 
discussing  a  question  in  which  she  had  no  personal 
interest,  "  not  only  of  the  girls " 

"What?"  said  Harold.  The  exclamation,  for 
it  was  really  an  exclamation,  burst  from  him  invol- 
untarily. 

"  A  waste  not  only  of  the  girls,"  Madge  repeated, 
"  but  of  you." 

His  circuit  of  the  room  had  brought  him  near  to 
her  chair.  Out  of  the  surrounding  shadow  he  looked 
at  her.  He  thought  that  he  had  never  seen  anything 
quite  so  lovely. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      199 

"Isn't  that  rather  a  light  word?"  he  suggested. 

"  It  is  a  very  severe  word,"  she  replied. 

"  I  know,  but  for  a  girl  of  your  sort,  you  know, 
about  that  sort  of  girl?  " 

"  You  mean  you  wonder  that,  instead  of  a  great 
waste,  I  don't  call  it  a  great  wrong?  " 

Insensibly  he  was  drawing  slowly  nearer.  It  was 
as  if  she  drew  him. 

"  Why,  yes,"  he  said. 

Her  voice  was  still  calmly  speculative. 

"  Of  course,"  she  explained,  "  it  is  a  great  wrong 
that  any  woman  should  be  forced  by  necessity  to 
give  herself  against  her  will." 

Harold  quickly  put  his  cigarette  on  the  table, 
leaned  against  the  table-edge  close  beside  her,  and 
looked  down  at  her.  Embarrassed  he  still  was,  but 
his  embarrassment  was  now  of  a  new  kind.  His 
cheeks  burned,  and  his  voice  stuck  in  his 
throat. 

"  I  say,"  he  gasped,  "  you  don't  believe  in  free 
love,  do  you  ?  " 

She  looked  up  at  him. 

"  Is  there  any  other  kind?"  she  asked. 

She  was  still  curled  in  the  Morris-chair,  her  heels 
at  the  edge  of  the  seat,  her  hands  clasped  about  her 
raised  knees.  To  meet  his  hot  eyes,  she  had  leaned 
her  head  -  far  back  on  the  top  cushion :  the  dark 
kimono  fell  away  from  her  throat,  which  was 
stretched,  firm  and  white,  by  her  upturned  chin.  The 
black  hair  parted  over  her  forehead  and  gathered 
in  a  low  knot  behind,  did  for  her  face  what  the 
kimono  did  for  her  throat.  Under  the  clinging 
folds  of  the  latter,  her  maturing  figure  was  clearly 


200      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

outlined;  against  the  cloud  of  her  hair  her  face 
shone  like  a  star. 

"  Is  there  any  other  kind  ?  "  she  repeated. 

Harold's  heart  hammered.     He  leaned  forward. 

*  You  look  at  me  so  quickly  and  so  steadily/'  he 
answered,  "  that  you  almost  startle  me  into  telling 
the  truth." 

She  was  about  to  answer,  but  he  did  not  wait  for 
the  answer.  He  stooped  suddenly  lower,  gripped 
her  shoulders  with  his  straining  hands,  and  pressed 
his  mouth  to  hers. 

There  was  an  unexpected  struggle  and  a  loud  crash. 
The  Morris-chair  fell  on  its  side,  and  Madge,  re- 
leased, leaped  from  the  wreck.  As  Harold  stag- 
gered to  his  feet  beside  her,  she  struck  him  smartly 
across  the  mouth  with  her  open  palm. 

His  hand  flew  to  his  face.  He  reeled.  His  throat 
was  bursting  with  amazement,  anger,  shame. 

"  What  are  you  doing?  "  she  cried. 

His  hand  fell.  From  eyes  nearly  blinded  he  saw 
her  facing  him,  flushed  to  a  greater  beauty  by  her 
indignation.  Her  gray  eyes  pierced  him  like  shafts 
of  light.  He  sought  refuge  in  the  attitude  of  mind 
to  which  he  had  been  reared. 

"  I  was  trying,"  he  said  with  a  smile  that  crooked 
and  stiffened  on  his  smarting  face,  "  to  kiss  you.  It 
seems  that  I  didn't  succeed.  I  never  was  good  at 
kissing-games." 

"Kissing  me?  And  like — that!"  Her  hands 
were  clenched  at  her  sides.  "  I  am  ashamed — oh,  I 
am  ashamed  for  you !  " 

Like  every  man  defeated  in  an  amorous  quest,  he 
was  hitter.  He  sought  cheap  refuge  in  a  sneer. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      201 

"Why  shouldn't  I  kiss  you?"  he  demanded. 

"  You  know,"  she  answered,  eyeing  him  clearly, 
"  what  that,  sort  of  kiss  means." 

"  I  do,  and  I  might  have  known  what  all  your 
fine  talk  amounted  to.  Free  love !  You're  a  great 
believer  in  it,  I  don't  think !  " 

She  was  still  panting  from  the  struggle.  The  silk 
kimono  rose  and  fell  above  her  breast. 

"  I  should  have  seen  that  you  didn't — that  you 
couldn't  understand,"  she  said.  "  There  is  no  love 
but  free  love.  When  love  isn't  free  it  isn't  love. 
Free  love?  Yes.  But  not  free  lust!  " 

Her  words,  and  still  more  the  fact  of  the  maturity 
that  triumphed  over  her  years,  •  struck  home.  The 
reaction  began.  He  hung  his  head. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  he  said.  "  I  was  a  fool.  I  was 
worse.  I  thought •" 

She  made  a  generous  gesture  of  denial. 

"  I  was  to  blame,"  she  interrupted.  "  I  was  to 
blame,  too.  Perhaps  more.  I  should  have  known. 
Maybe  I  haven't  had  enough  experience.  But  I 
should  have  known  that  you  couldn't  be  brought  to 
look  at  things  as  I  do,  that  you  can't  speak  my  lan- 
guage and  can't  learn  to  speak  it.  Instead 

Well,  I  always  knew  you  were  light,  but  I  didn't 
think  you  were  shallow.  I  thought  you  could  meet 
an  intellectual  question  intellectually.  That's  the 
worst  of  it:  the  disappointment." 

His  head  hung  lower. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  he  said  again. 

"No,"  she  corrected,  her  grave  face  lighting; 
"  that  is  for  me.  I  should  have  known  that  you 
didn't  know.  It  was  all  so  quick  that  I  used  my  first 


202      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

weapon  without  thinking:  I  struck  you.  Forgive 
me." 

He  looked  up.  He  could  not  suppress  a  rueful 
smile  at  her  attitude :  she  was  offering  her  hand,  ask- 
ing his  pardon! 

He  touched  her  cool  fingers.  His  own  fingers 
tightened.  He  caught  her  extended  wrist  in  his  other 
hand.  His  face  was  once  more  tense.  Something  in 
him  was  changing,  not  suddenly,  but  fundamentally 
and  finally.  He  almost  guessed  that  it  was  changing. 

"  Listen,"  he  said,  as  she  tried  to  draw  away. 
"  Don't  be  afraid.  I've  been  a  beast,  but  I'll  not  be 
that  again.  I  see  that  I've  always  been  a  beast. 
But  now — now  I  see  you  splendid,  radiant,  true — I 
know  now  what  I  did  not  know.  I  look  at  you  and 
I  know  that — that — I " 

She  had  freed  herself.  She  was  looking  at  him 
quietly. 

"  Not  that,"  she  said. 

But  Harold  was  not  to  be  retarded.  The  gift  of 
words  he  had  always  had;  he  felt  at  this  moment 
that,  absent  as  was  his  familiar  trick  of  epigram  and 
swiftly  as  the  words  came,  all  speech  was  desperately 
inadequate. 

11  I've  spent  my  life  looking  for  you  and  mistaking 
shadows  for  you,"  he  vowed,  with  all  the  certainty 
of  youth,  and  with  all  youth's  readiness  to  regard 
itself  as  age.  "  I  was  so  brought  up  that  I  mistook 
the  shadows  for  the  reality,  and  so,  when  I  found 
you,  I  was  stunned,  I  was  mad.  I  think  the  shadows 
were  the  shadows  of  you  twisted  by  the  dirty  earth 
they  fell  on.  But  you're  real.  I'm  sure  of  that  now. 
You're  real  and  I " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      203 

Her  face  was  half  turned  from  him. 

"  No,  no !  "  she  said. 

"  I  love  you  I  "  he  ended.     "  I  love  you !  "     .* 

He  stopped  for  sheer  lack  of  breath. 

She  faced  him  squarely  again,  her  lips  firm. 

"  How  can  you  say  that?  "  she  asked. 

He  thought  he  scented  victory.  He  was  all  sin- 
cerity; but  the  apparent  approach  of  triumph  re- 
gained for  him  something  of  his  old  manner. 

"  IVe  no  right  to  say  it,"  he  confessed,  "  but  it 
takes  courage  for  a  chap  who's  done  what  I've  done 
to  say  anything,  and  when  he's  in  love  even  a  coward 
is  heroic." 

"  You  are  very  silly,  anyhow." 

"  Why  not?  Reason  flies  out  at  the  window  when 
love  comes  in  at  the  door." 

She  would  not  trifle. 

"  And  I  am  only  a  girl,"  she  continued. 

"  You  are  the  most  wonderful  woman  in  the 
world,"  he  answered.  "  Try  me.  I  know  I'm  not 
much.  But  I  shall  expect  only  a  little  of  you — only 
a  very  little." 

."  It's  not  that,  but  you  want  nothing  but  happiness 
in  life;  and  when  you  come  to  think  about  it,  there 
are  few  baser  desires  than  the  desire  for  happiness." 

His  victory  seemed  not  so  certain,  after  all. 

"  You  judge  me  by  my  talk,"  he  pleaded.  "  Don't 
do  that.  I  know  my  talk  is  just  whipped  cream: 
nothing  to  set  your  intellectual  teeth  in." 

"It  is  something  deeper  than  your  talk.  You 
are " 

"  Anything  you  please,"  he  acknowledged;  "  but  I 
Jove  you." 


204      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

She  shook  her  head.     The  victory  receded. 

"  It  won't  do?  "  he  asked  in  an  altered  voice. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  it  won't  do."  Her  eyes  met 
his.  "  Don't  you  see?" 

"  I  see  that  of  course  you  care  nothing  for  me." 

"  Of  course  I  don't."  She  spoke  simply.  "  Not 
in  the  way  you  mean." 

"  I  mean  the  best  way,  Madge." 

"  Not  in  the  best  way,  then.  There  can't  even, 
for  a  long  time,  be  trust." 

Harold,  as  he  accounted  for  it  to  himself,  took  his 
medicine. 

"  But  I  may  come  here  sometimes?" 

"  I  think  you  had  better  not  come  here  for  a  little 
while." 

"  Not  even  if  your  father  is  here?  " 

"  Not  even  then.  When  he  knows  he  will  feel 
as  I  do." 

The  surprises  of  the  evening  were  not  yet  ended 
for  Harold. 

"  You  mean  to  say  you'll  tell  him?  " 

"  Why  not?  Now  that  I  see  it  clearly,  I  see  that 
I  am  the  one  that  has  been  to  blame.  I  should  have 
understood  you  better." 

"O  Lord!"  said  Harold. 

It  was  unromantic,  as  he  afterwards  reflected;  but 
it  was,  from  him,  adequate.  He  found  his 
hat. 

"This  is  final?"  he  inquired. 

She  nodded.  From  that  nod  there  was  just  then 
no  appeal. 

"  You  won't  believe — you  won't  let  me  apologize? 
You  jyon't  let  me " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      205 

"/have  apologized,"  she  cut  in.     "I  hope  you 
will  forgive  me.     Good-night." 
"  Good-night,"  said  Harold. 

§  5.  He  stumbled  down  the  long  stairs  and  into 
the  street.  Once  on  the  pavement,  he  filled  his  lungs 
with  a  deep  draught  of  his  normal  city  air.  He 
looked  up  at  the  apartment-house,  a  puzzle  of  emo- 
tions stirring  him. 

"  O  Lord!  "  he  said  for  the  second  time. 


XIII 

IN  the  current  use  of  the  term,  Dan  was  grown  up. 
He  was  tall  and  large-framed,  and  already 
evinced  a  tendency  toward  heaviness.  His  tow- 
colored  hair  had  long  since  turned  to  brown,  and  his 
snub-nose  had  matured  into  a  likeness  of  his  father's : 
it  was  the  strongest  feature  in  his  face.  His  eyes  and 
skin  were  not  so  clear  as  they  had  been  in  his  Ameri- 
cus  days,  and  his  mouth  was  not  so  firm  as  an  exact- 
ing connoisseur  might  have  wished  it  to  be.  Yet, 
in  spite  of  an  awkwardness  and  uncertainty  that  still 
clung  to  him,  the  result  of  the  self-consciousness  en- 
gendered by  his  up-bringing,  he  seemed  a  sturdy 
enough  young  man,  typical  of  his  economic  class.  He 
was,  in  fact,  good  looking  and  had  the  virtue  of  rarely 
being  aware  of  it. 

His  clothes,  as  most  men's  do,  particularly  mir- 
rored his  mental  attitude.  They  were  the  sum  of 
two  wishes:  the  wish  to  appear  prosperous  and  the 
wish  to  look  like  the  persons  among  whom  he  worked. 
He  took  care  to  study  the  habiliments  of  the  patrons 
of  O'Neill  &  Silverstone,  and  to  learn,  from  a  study 
of  the  windows  of  the  best  tailors'  shops,  what  was 
"  correct."  Even  if  his  purse  drove  him  to  Four- 
teenth Street  to  procure  this,  Dan  was  extremely 
punctilious  about  what  was  "  correct."  What  the 
better  world  decreed,  even  to  the  tying  of  a  neck- 
cloth and  the  number  of  buttons  on  a  waistcoat,  was 

206 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      207 

proper,  and  anything  else  was  improper.  Dan  erred 
neither  on  the  side  of  the  extremely  fashionable  nor 
on  that  of  the  ignorantly  unfashionable. 

Meanwhile,  his  clandestine  life  continued  inevita- 
bly the  war  between  the  differing  emotions  that  had 
been  bred  in  him,  between  the  mandates  of  desire 
and  the  dictates  of  conscience.  The  casual  women 
became  more  frequent,  but  the  reaction  of  repentance 
continued  proportionately  severe.  In  the  shabby  sol- 
itude of  his  boarding-house,  he  tried  his  case  over 
and  over  again,  and  over  and  over  again  condemned 
the  defendant  with  no  further  argument  of  the  vexed 
puzzle  of  ethics  than  the  statement  that  what  the 
world  publicly  pronounced  wrong  must  be  what  the 
world  publicly  pronounced  it.  In  the  electric  lights 
and  shadows  of  the  dizzy  night  outside,  he  as  often 
gave  way,  without  any  argument  at  all,  to  the  tempta- 
tion that  silence  and  suppression  had,  years  before, 
placed  for  him  in  the  exaggerated  curves  of  the  girls 
that  now  accosted  him,  in  the  swish  of  their  lifted 
skirts,  the  thrill  of  their  sibilant  whispers,  and  the 
invitation  of  their  half-closed  eyes.  And  amid  the 
noisy  hurry  of  the  office,  where  it  was  his  duty  to 
aid  men  in  buying  nothing  at  a  loss  and  selling  less 
at  a  profit,  he  justified  himself  and  boasted,  for  no 
greater  reason  than  that  it  was  splendid  to  be  what 
the  world  'secretly  admired. 

His  social  life  remained,  on  the  other  hand, 
cramped  and  brief.  Sometimes  he  sat  in  the  board- 
ing-house parlor  talking  politics  to  his  male  fellow- 
lodgers,  who*  agreed  with  him.  Sometimes  he  took 
one  of  the  stenographers  that  were  his  table  com- 
panions to  Central  Park  or  the  Aquarium,  or,  if  the 


208      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

season  suited,  to  Coney  Island,  only  to  return  dis- 
contented because  he  could  find  so  little  of  which  to 
speak  to  them,  and  because  a  merely  friendly  relation 
with  a  conventional  woman,  and  he  found  these 
women  conventional,  speedily  lacked  piquancy.  On 
several  nights  in  each  week  he  went  to  the  theater 
and  liked  the  musical  comedies;  and  his  Sundays  he 
spent  sleeping  and  reading  the  Sunday  papers.  For 
his  brief  vacations  he  went  to  Atlantic  City,  where,  in 
effect,  he  took  New  York  with  him. 

There  was  much  that  he  wanted  to  do  and  did 
not  do.  He  thought  that  it  would  be  a  privilege 
to  meet  a  chorus  girl,  but  he  never  had  the  chance, 
or  the  courage  to  make  a  chance.  He  wanted  to 
visit  the  Richardsons;  but  Harold,  though  he  spoke 
often  of  his  family,  and  seemed  the  best  of  friends, 
appeared  loath  to  ask  Dan  to  call,  and  Dan  could 
never  bring  himself  to  ask  to  be  asked.  Occasion- 
ally he  went  home  with  some  other  of  his  fellow- 
clerks  and  met  a  sister  or  a  cousin,  but  these  girls 
always  either  tired  him  for  the  same  reason  that  the 
stenographers  tired  him,  or  else  displayed  a  glitter 
that  startled  him  into  irreparable  retreat. 

He  was,  as  yet,  rather  abstemious  in  the  use  of 
alcohol.  There  was  an  office  rule  against  the  taking 
of  liquor  during  the  business-day,  and,  whereas  it 
was  Dan's  custom  to  drink  a  cocktail  with  the  clerk 
that  chanced  to  leave  the  brokers'  when  Dan  did,  he 
rarely  drank  a  second.  Even  when  he  went  out  for 
the  evening  with  such  a  companion,  he  was  relatively 
temperate.  This  was  as  truly  due  to  his  inculcated 
ideals  as  were  all  his  other  acts.  He  reverenced  suc- 
cess. By  success  he  meant  the  acquisition  of  money, 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      209 

and,  however  short-sighted  he  was  in  other  directions, 
he  saw  clearly  that  money-getting  and  the  undue  con- 
sumption of  alcohol  were,  until  the  money-getting 
was  well  under  way,  incompatible. 

Yet  he  was  not  of  a  saving  character,  and,  with 
his  small  income,  it  was  hard  to  save.  He  wanted 
to  make  money,  but  he  wanted  to  make  it  quickly,  as 
nearly  all  successful  men  seemed  to  make  it.  A  few 
times  he  went  stealthily  to  a  bucket-shop  and  bought 
stocks  on  a  margin.  He  lost  and  won  and  then  lost 
all  that  he  had  originally  invested.  On  one  Satur- 
day morning,  when  his  bank-book  was  returned  to 
him  balanced,  he  looked,  scornfully  and  hopelessly, 
at  the  red-inked  figures  at  the  foot  of  the  page. 

"A  hundred  and  ten  dollars !"  he  said.  "Gee, 
Harold's  father  gives  that  much  in  tips  in  a  month, 
and  O'Neill  spends  it  in  a  night.  I  could  spend  that 
much  in  a  night,  too.  I've  a  good  mind  to  try  it." 

He  did  try  it,  and  he  nearly  succeeded.  He  passed 
the  following  day  in  bed,  companioned  by  remorse, 
and  then,  on  Monday,  began  his  uphill  way  again. 

Nevertheless,  he  loved  his  work.  Its  common- 
place details  grew  wearisome;  its  endless  routine  pre- 
sented no  variety  save  in  the  various  degrees  of  its 
boredom;  but  he  liked  it.  He  liked  to  know,  out 
of  office-hours,  that,  during  those  hours,  he  was  part 
of  a  vast  machine;  and  he  liked  to  think  that  he 
might  some  day  become  a  larger  part  of  it.  He  liked 
to  know  that,  though  the  great  work  of  this  machine 
went  on  about  him  without  his  comprehending  its 
secret  processes  and  intentions,  and  could  go  on  heed- 
less of  his  absence  should  he  absent  himself,  he  was 
at  least  clc>se  to  its  movements  and  a  sharer  in  them. 


210      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Small  as  his  imagination  was,  he  could  not  but  realize 
the  wonder  of  The  Street,  could  not  but  feel  the 
towering  majesty  of  Lower  Broadway,  sending 
through  the  silent  air  its  momentary  manifestoes  that 
make  men  rich  or  poor  in  Paris  or  St.  Petersburg, 
that  starve  a  state  in  India  or  start  a  war  in  Afghan- 
istan. 

§  2.  "  Anyhow/'  remarked  Harold,  with  whom 
Dan  was  discussing  business  in  a  Broadway  cafe, 
"  it's  me  to  beat  it." 

The  evening  was  that  of  Harold's  illuminating 
call  upon  Madge  Giddey,  the  time  eleven'  o'clock. 
The  younger  Richardson  had  hurried,  as  fast  as  an 
elevated  train  would  take  him,  to  that  part  of  the 
city  with  which  he  was  most  familiar,  much  as  the 
wounded  beast  retreats  to  its  lair.  Here,  as  he  had 
every  reason  to  expect,  he  chanced  upon  Dan,  whom 
he  kept  in  ignorance  of  his  recent  adventure,  but 
whom  he  perplexed  by  a  flow  of  spirits  that  seemed 
abnormally  high,  and  a  thirst  that  seemed  abnormally 
large. 

"  Beat  the  market?  "  inquired  Dan,  who  yearned 
for  the  time  when  his  savings  were  to  justify  the 
first  great  plunge  that  must  convince  the  handsome, 
slow-spoken  Silverstone  of  his  clerk's  financial  genius. 
"  You  mean  you  are  going  to  try  to  beat  the  market?  " 

Harold  shook  his  curly  head. 

"  Not  yet,"  he  replied.  "  Acdpere  quam  facere 
iniuriam  praestat.  That  means  that  discretion  is 
the  better  part  of  valor,  Daniel.  No,  not  beat  the 
market:  beat  it  out  of  the  market;  quit  the  job. — 
Drink  up." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      211 

Dan's  heart  contracted;  he  did  not  want  to  lose  this 
companion. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  he  inquired,  his 
blue  eyes  wide. 

"  Keep  on  with  the  study  of  the  law.  The  study 
of  the  law  is  the  root  of  all  evil." 

"  Your  father  said " 

"  How  often  do  I  have  to  tell  you  not  to  count 
the  governor?  The  governor  is  what  the  mathe- 
maticians call  a  negligible  quantity:  he  is  all  there, 
but  not  much." 

"  But  why  are  you  quitting  the  office  before  you've 
given  it  a  fair  trial?  " 

Harold  buried  his  nose  in  his  glass. 

"  I  have  given  the  office  a  fair  trial,"  he  said  when 
his  nose  emerged  again.  u  I've  tried  it,  condemned 
it,  and  sentenced  it.  Now,  I'm  going  to  execute  it." 

"  Where  will  you  study?  "  asked  Dan. 

"  Out  home." 

14  Will  you  practice  out  there,  too?  " 

"  I  rather  think  I  will,"  said  Harold,  with  the  air 
of  one  that  has  but  to  choose,  and  with  no  indication 
of  the  fact  that  his  determination  was  not  an  hour 
old.  "  There  is  a  good  field  at  Lawnhurst  and  a 
chance  to  get  into  politics." 

,     Dan  felt,  however,  that  there  was  something  back 
of  this.  *  His  voice  assumed  its  bantering  tone. 

"Will  you  be  leaving  soon?  "  he  persevered. 

"  To-morrow  morning,"  said  Harold,  with  mock 
seriousness,  "  'you  will  meet,  but  you  will  miss  me; 
there  will  be  a  vacant  chair.'  ' 

Dan  sighed.  He  grasped  his  cheeks  between  a 
thumb  and  forefinger. 


212      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  quit  right  away,"  he  kept 
it  up. 

"  For  a  thousand  reasons.  It's  all  very  well  for 
the  governor  to  drop  into  the  office,  for  instance, 
and  lose  a  few  hundred  a  week;  but  I  wasn't  cut  out 
for  business.  Besides,  I  don't  like  the  crowd." 

"  Silverstone's  rotten,"  said  Dan. 

"  And  O'Neill,"  Harold  heartily  supplemented — 
"  and  that  double-barreled  ass,  Giddey." 

"  Giddey  ?  "  began  Dan.     "  Why,  I  thought " 

"  I  never  want  to  set  eyes  on  him  again !  "  Harold 
declared.  He  called  a  waiter.  u  Drink  to  my  luck 
at  the  law,"  he  added. 

He  had,  nevertheless,  been  too  heavy  in  his  stress 
upon  Giddey's  name.  Dan  saw  a  light.  As  the 
waiter  brought  fresh  glasses,  Dan  slowly  asked  : 

II  Have  you  had  a  scrap  with  the  old  man?  " 

"  What  old  man  ?  "  asked  Harold.  "  The  world's 
full  of  old  men,  and  they're  all  nutty." 

II 1  mean  our  friend  Gideon." 

"  I  have  not,"  said  Harold,  "  and  what's  more,  I 
don't  mean  to  have." 

"Oh!"  said  Dan. 

He  said  it  meaningly,  said  it  in  the  tone  in  which 
a  clerk  at  O'Neill  &  Silverstone's  always  referred  to 
the  romances  of  a  fellow  clerk.  He  was  sure  that 
he  was  on  the  track  now,  and  he  meant  to  follow  it. 

The  significance  of  that  tone  was  not  lost  on 
Harold. 

"  What  do  you  mean?  "  he  demanded. 

Dan's  was  the  wise  voice  of  him  who  has  been 
bred  in  the  country  and  whose  education  has  been 
continued  by  employment  in  the  large  city. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      213 

"  You  must  have  found  her  a  nice  little  armful," 
said  he. 

It  was  precisely  the  sort  of  remark  that  he  heard 
daily  in  the  office.  He  had  heard  Harold  employ 
it  in  regard  to  assignations  with  street-girls,  and  he 
had  never  heard  it  resented.  Yet  now  he  was  sur- 
prised to  see  his  companion's  round  face  darken. 

;<  What  are  you  talking  about?  "asked  Harold. 

The  table  was  between  them,  but  Dan  drew  back. 

"  It  doesn't  matter,"   he  said.     "  I  didn't  mean 

to " 

Harold  leaned  across  the  table  and  thumped  it 
with  his  fist.     The  glasses  hummed. 

"  Yes,  it  does  matter,"  he  insisted.  "  I  want  to 
know  what  person  you  were  referring  to." 

This  was  nonsense.  Dan  had,  in  those  days,  no 
wish  in  the  world  to  speak  ill  of  any  woman;  but  it 
was,  he  reflected,  absurd  of  Harold  to  take  such  a 
pose.  He  gripped  his  courage  and  unleashed  his 
annoyance. 

"  I  was  referring,"  he  explained,  "  to  the  girl  that 
you  once  called  '  a  free-stone  peach.'  ' 

The  reminder  had  its  effect. 

"  I  ought  to  be  kicked,"  said  Harold.  But  he  re- 
turned to  the  attack,  his  eyes  again  narrowing. 
"  And  you  thought " 

Dan  shrugged  his  right  shoulder. 

"You  know  well  enough  what  I  thought,"  he 
said. 

What  he  was  just  then  thinking  was  this:  "  There 
is  going  to,  be  a  fight  here — in  a  minute — now.  I 
can  whip  the  fellow  that  I  am  fond  of,  and  I'll  have 
to  whip  him,  much  as  I  hate  to  do  it.  Then  there'll 


2i4      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

be  a  scene,  and  we'll  be  thrown  out  of  this  cafe,  and 
there  will  be  what  I  most  fear  in  the  world — publicity 
and  jeers  and  disgrace." 

But  nothing  of  this  sort  happened.  Harold  sud- 
denly leaned  back  in  his  chair,  and  his  face  went 
white. 

"  I  ought  to  be  kicked,"  he  said  again.  He 
poured  down  his  throat  the  contents  of  the  glass  that 
had  been  standing  at  his  elbow.  "  Madge  Giddey 
is  not  that  kind  of  girl.  People  like  you  and  me  can't 
understand  her  for  the  simple  reason  that  she's  good. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  she's  too  good.  Her  innocence 
plays  about  her  like  lightning :  you  never  know  where 
it  will  strike  next." 

Dan  heard  him  with  wonder.  Here  was  some- 
thing new.  Here  was  something  not  of  the  clerk 
clerky.  Here,  apparently,  was  the  way  in  which  a 
gentleman  treated  his  affairs  when  his  affairs  were 
with  someone  that,  if  not  quite  a  lady,  was  at  least 
not  quite  at  the  opposite  extreme  of  the  social  ladder. 
Clearly,  in  such  cases,  the  "  correct "  course  was  to 
defend  the  woman,  even  to  perjure  one's  self  in  her 
behalf.  Because  he  had  been  ready  to  believe  his 
fellow  clerks'  boastful  lies  of  their  nocturnal  con- 
quests, Dan  was  now  ready  to  doubt  Harold's  honest 
denial  of  conquest.  The  power  to  determine  be- 
tween truth  and  falsehood  by  mere  instinct  had  been 
early  withered  in  him. 

Still,  he  saw  that,  if  it  were  right  for  a  gentleman 
to  overturn  fact  in  the  cause  of  a  woman,  it  was 
equally  "  correct  "  for  a  gentleman's  friend  to  pre- 
tend to  accept  the  lie  without  any  sign  of  recognition. 
He  acted  accordingly. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      215 

"  I  guess  you're  right,"  he  said.  "  I  guess  we're 
too  anxious  to  think  a  girl's  crooked." 

Harold,  at  all  events,  was  now  secure  upon  the 
eminence  that  he  had  once  before  that  night  attained. 

"  We're  too  greedy  after  mere  happiness,"  he  said; 
"  and  when  you  come  to  think  about  it,  there  are  few 
baser  desires  than  the  desire  for  happiness." 

He  was  conscious  of  having  heard  the  phrase  be- 
fore, but,  occasionally,  like  a  more  celebrated  wit,  he 
took  his  own  where  he  found  it. 

"  Anyway,"  said  Dan,  as  anxious  now  to  change 
the  subject  as  he  had  formerly  been  to  hold  it  fast, 
"  I'm  sorry  you're  going  to  leave  the  office." 

Harold  seemed  equally  ready. 

"  I'm  not  sorry,"  he  replied.  "  A  broker's  office 
is  no  place  for  a  poor  man." 

"  You  don't  call  yourself  poor?  " 

"  There's  nothing  so  poor  in  this  world  as  a  rich 
man's  son.  Let's  have  one  more  drink  and  then  all 
go  home." 

§  3.  Lysander  Fry  came  into  the  cafe  as  they 
were  giving  their  order.  He  saw  the  two  clerks  and 
came  to  their  table.  Dan  introduced  him  to  Harold, 
and  Fry  sat  down. 

The  comparison  of  his  old  friend  with  his  newer 
was  interesting  to  Dan.  He  admired  the  manner  of 
the  latter,  but  the  patent  success  of  the  former  did 
not  fail  to  make  its  impression.  Accepting  Harold's 
utterance  concerning  happiness  as  merely  a  by-product 
of  a  lying  defense  of  Madge,  Dan  concluded  that, 
for  all  their  superficial  differences,  Fry  and  Harold 
had  attitudes  toward  life  that  were  essentially  alike. 


216      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

The  one,  his  recent  utterance  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing, wanted,  to  be  sure,  nothing  but  pleasure, 
whereas  the  other  wanted  pleasure  and  power  too. 
Dan  wondered  whether  Harold's  manner  was  at  dis- 
cord with  the  attainment  of  Fry's  success.  He  de- 
cided that  the  two  things  were  not  essentially  antag- 
onistic, and  he  thought  that  he  might  in  time  be  able 
to  join  them  in  his  own  person. 

All  this,  however,  went  on  in  Dan's  mind  while 
his  lips  were  busy,  for  most  of  the  talk  was  still  left 
to  him  and  Harold.  In  the  presence  of  a  man  with 
whom  he  was  not  well  acquainted,  talk  was  not  Fry's 
forte.  For  a  while  he  met  Harold's  sly  ironies  with 
a  vulgar  geniality  that  had  in  it  something  of  the 
heroic;  but,  after  a  few  monosyllabic  references  to 
his  still  mysterious  employment  at  Albany,  he  di- 
rected the  conversation  into  a  channel  where  he 
knew  Dan  could  navigate,  and  then  he  relapsed  into 
comparative  quiet. 

"  How'd  you  like  the  brokerage  business  by  this 
time?  "  he  asked  of  Dan. 

"  Fine,"  said  Dan.  "  I'll  never  get  tired  of  it, 
but  Richardson  here  says  it's  no  place  for  a  poor 


man." 


"  So  that's  your  opinion?  "  Fry  inquired,  fingering 
an  obtrusive  ear  and  turning  to  Harold. 

"Opinion?"  Harold  emptied  his  glass.  "My 
dear  man,  one  doesn't  have  opinions  nowadays.  You 
might  as  well  ask  me  for  my  snuff-box  or  my  flint- 
lock. You  haven't  any  opinions  yourself:  you're  too 
clever.  I'll  bet  on  that." 

But  Fry  was  not  to  be  so  easily  entrapped.  He 
speedily  had  his  two  acquaintances  arguing  about 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      217 

their  own  business  and  informing  him  concerning  it 
the  while.  Within  five  minutes  the  little  cafe  table 
presented  the  spectacle  of  a  pair  of  men  of  oppos- 
ing views  on  the  subject  under  discussion,  and,  be- 
tween them,  a  third  that,  merely  by  holding  his 
tongue,  made  each  of  the  two  believe  that  the  third 
agreed  with  him. 

"  You  mustn't  dislike  him,"  said  Dan,  when  Har- 
old, finally  remembering  the  last  suburban  train  and 
looking  at  his  watch,  had  hurried  away.  "  He  and 
I  agree  on  most  things." 

"  He  thinks  he  knows  it  all,"  said  Fry. 

"  He  does  know  most  of  it,"  Dan  protested,  "  even 
if  he  is  so  young,  and  he  has  a  right  to  talk  so.  No- 
body succeeds  unless  he's  assertive,  and  Richardson's 
an  assertive  fellow." 

Fry  sniffed. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  there's  nothing  noisier  than  a 
drum  and  nothing  emptier.  This  fellow's  a  mark. 
Who's  his  father?  " 

"E.  Q.  Richardson,"  said  Dan,  and  added 
proudly:  "  I  know  him." 

"  Edward  Quimby?  "  Fry  took  it  up.  "  An  old 
fellow  with  side-whiskers?  Lives  at  Lawnhurst?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  I  thought  that'd  be  it.     Do  you  go  there  often  ?  " 

"•Not  often,"  Dan  compromised. 

Fry  puffed  at  the  much  chewed  cigar  that  he  was 
smoking. 

"  I  want  to  meet  him  some  time,"  he  said,  reflec- 
tively. "Pretty  much  of  a  stuffed  shirt,  ain't 
he?" 

Dan  was  shocked,  but  thrilled. 


218      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  He's  mighty  respectable,"  said  Dan. 

"  Hum,"  said  Fry.  "  I  wonder  why  so  many 
people  that  are  respectable  are  never  anything  else." 

"  I  don't  know,"  Dan  smiled;  "  but  his  son  don't 
take  after  him,  anyhow." 


XIV 

THE  next  year,  the  year  1897,  was  not  one  of 
the  happiest  years  of  Dan's  life.  With 
Harold  out  of  the  broker's  office  and  a  less 
and  less  frequent  visitor  to  those  places  with  which 
he  had  been  familiar,  Dan  found  himself  lonely. 
Lysander  Fry  reappeared  from  time  to  time,  a  wan- 
dering star  to  whom  was  reserved  not  darkness,  but 
only  the  pleasant  haze  of  business  mystery;  Dan's 
easy  acquaintanceships  with  the  other  employees  of 
O'Neill  &  Silverstone  continued,  and  his  youth 
helped,  as  youth  will,  to  build  bridges  across  the 
social  canons  formed  by  the  eroding  of  the  streams 
of  circumstance.  Yet  his  heart  was  hungry,  and  the 
long  twelve  months  were  a  dreary  stretch. 

He  was  expected  home  for  Christmas,  but  he  liked 
the  glitter  of  New  York's  Christmas  eve,  and  so  he 
compromised  with  his  father  and  mother,  and  went 
to  Americus  for  Thanksgiving  instead,  only  to  find 
the  town  more  oppressive  than  when  he  had  last  seen 
it  and  his  parents  apparently  unchanged.  The  place 
was  narrow  and  suspicious,  the  people  wearisome. 

Not,  of  course,  Old  Tom  and  his  wife.  For  them 
Dan  retained  the  respect  that  had  been  early  taught 
him.  They  remained  superior.  What  they  had 
failed  to  say  of  morality  convinced  him  that  they  had 
a  standard  of  purity  higher  than  the  ordinary  world's; 
what  they  had  concealed  and  the  fact  that  they  had 

«9 


220      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

concealed  it  showed  him  that,  at  least  for  moments, 
all  mankind  stooped  to  lusts  and  curtained  its  stoop- 
ing; and  what  they  had  taught  him  of  reverence  for 
success  and  obedience  to  the  authority  of  the  success- 
ful stood  firm  as  an  active  principle  in  his  manual 
of  conduct.  For  the  rest,  Mrs.  Barnes  said  little, 
but  looked  a  tremulous  love;  and  her  gnarled  hus- 
band asked  concerning  his  affairs,  remarked  that  the 
store  was  hurt  by  the  extension  of  a  trolley-line  to 
Doncaster,  but  that  he  was  holding  his  own,  and  that, 
if  the  railroad  would  only  make  Americus  the  freight 
line  terminus  that  rumor  said  was  contemplated,  the 
town  would  revive  with  it  and  the  time  yet  come 
when  Dan  could  return  to  inherit  a  business  worthy  of 
his  education. 

Dan  wished  his  father  well,  but  did  not  want  to 
leave  New  York.  What  he  wanted  was  to  sit  as 
his  own  agent  in  the  great  game  of  the  metropolis; 
but,  back  in  the  office,  his  personal  progress  was  slow. 
He  received  another  raise  of  the  wages  that  he  al- 
ways described  as  "  salary  " ;  Giddey  was  ageing 
and  to  Dan  had  fallen  the  direct  care  of  several  of 
the  firm's  larger  accounts,  the  elder  Richardson's 
among  them;  but  the  office  did  not  show  any  active 
disposition  to  give  its  clerk  the  financial  chance  that 
he  wanted. 

In  spite  of  Fry's  adverse  criticism,  Dan  looked  up 
to  Mr.  Richardson  and  felt  honored  by  the  retired 
merchant's  passing  attention.  Mr.  Richardson  was 
not  like  the  men  of  the  world  in  which  he  transacted 
his  stock-gambling,  but  he  had  succeeded. 

Harold's  father  led.  in  fact,  the  life  of  the  average 
individual,  the  rule  fur  which  is  to  do  as  little  harm 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      221 

as  possible  and  as  little  good  as  may  be.  His  men- 
tal gait  had  the  monotony  of  the  hobby-horse.  Yet 
he  considered  himself  philanthropic,  and  he  believed 
himself  a  reformer.  He  possessed  a  peaceable  heart 
and  a  controversial  brain.  As  a  Philadelphian,  Mr. 
Richardson  always  felt  it  his  duty  to  live  in  his  native 
city;  he  even  achieved  the  thrill  of  delightful  wicked- 
ness in  those  rare  moments  when,  forgetting  that  his 
exodus  had  been  made  at  his  wife's  wish  and  not 
his  own,  he  so  far  ceased  to  regret  his  exile  as  to 
condescend  to  Philadelphia  from  a  distance. 

All  this,  however,  assisted  Dan  little.  Mr.  Rich- 
ardson patronized,  platitudinized,  and  praised,  but 
he  did  not  invite  Dan  to  call  at  Lawnhurst. 

"  I  am  glad  to  see  you  remaining  with  your  first 
patrons,"  he  would  say,  his  side-whiskers  nodding. 
"  I  have  found  that  in  this  life  labor  conquers  all 
things." 

"  Thank  you,"  Dan  would  answer,  though  just 
what  he  was  grateful  for  he  never  paused  to  con- 
sider. "  How  is  Harold  getting  on?  " 

Mr.  Richardson  failed  to  see  that  this  question 
might  refer  to  the  fact  that  Harold  had  not  been  so 
constant  to  his  first  patrons  as  Dan  had  been. 

"  He  is  progressing,"  Mr.  Richardson  replied. 
"  He  is  just  about  to  be  admitted  to  the  bar,  and,  I 
am  proud  to  say,  he  is  showing,  politically,  an  un- 
selfish interest  in  our  local  movement  for  a  reform 
within  the  party.  I  hope,  Daniel,  that  you  are  in- 
terested in  Good  Government." 

Dan,  who  always  voted  the  straight  Republican 
ticket  because  he  had  never  happened  to  think  about 
any  other,  assented. 


222      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Yes,  sir,"  he  said;  but  he  added:  "  Only  I  don't 
have  much  time  for  active  politics." 

"Naturally,"  Mr.  Richardson  agreed;  "natu- 
rally. But  don't  be  dissatisfied.  Contentment  is  the 
greatest  of  blessings:  contentment  and  industry." 
He  pursed  his  lips  over  an  important  thought.  "  A 
half  a  loaf  is  better  than  no  bread."  He  nodded 
impressively.  "  Far  better,"  he  said. 

§  2.  Dan's  intimate  life  had  not  altered.  The 
boyish  dream  of  an  ideal  relationship  was  dim  with 
distance;  he  was  only  uncertainly  dissatisfied  by  the 
nocturnal  counterfeiters  of  love.  Indulgence  had  be- 
come habitual,  and  repentance  was  at  last  diminish- 
ing. His  only  dread  was  now  of  the  physical  ills 
that  he  might  contract.  He  would  go  through  long 
mental  tortures  over  suspicious  symptoms,  for  he  had 
no  instruction  concerning  the  facts  of  such  things 
save  the  utterly  wrong  gossip  of  his  associates.  His 
fears  had,  however,  thus  far  proved  groundless. 

One  evening  he  went  to  see  a  performance  of 
"  Camille."  He  scarcely  ever  read  a  book,  and  so 
depended,  as  most  of  the  males  of  his  class  do,  upon 
the  theater  for  his  fiction.  Ordinarily,  too,  he 
avoided  the  serious  drama;  but  somebody  had  told 
him  that  "  Camille  "  was  immoral,  and  so  he  bought 
an  upstairs  seat  for  this  production  in  which  the  cast 
was  headed  by  Olga  Nethersole.  He  sat  through 
the  play  spellbound,  and  came  out  to  the  street  still 
wrapped  in  the  illusion  of  the  stage. 

"  It's  wonderful !  "  he  thought.  "  And  there  must 
be  women  like  that  character  right  here  in  New  York 
to-night!  " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      223 

The  saccharine  sentimentality  of  the  younger 
Dumas  suited  Dan's  palate  as  nothing  else  that  he 
had  ever  tasted  could  suit  it.  To  young  men  shaped 
as  Dan  had  been  shaped  hydromel  is  the  most  danger- 
ous and  seductive  of  liquors,  and  Dan  drank  deep. 
He  realized  something  of  the  sordidness  that  had 
distinguished  his  dissipations;  he  wanted  at  once  to 
clothe  them  with  the  robes  of  romance;  he  wanted 
the  perfume  of  protestations  and  the  tinsel  of  vows; 
he  wanted  passion.  From  that  night  he  began  the 
quest  of  a  Marguerite  Gautier. 

§  3.  Harold  he  met  occasionally,  but  by  no  means 
frequently.  The  younger  Richardson  seemed  a  little 
changed.  There  was  still  the  old  flow  of  talk,  but 
Harold's  visits  to  town  were  obviously  fewer  than 
of  old,  and,  when  he  did  appear,  he  drank  less  than 
had  been  his  custom. 

"  I  saw  Olga  Nethersole  the  other  night,"  re- 
marked Dan  when,  one  evening,  Harold  had  called 
him  from  his  boarding-house  to  a  promenade  of 
Broadway.  He  had  an  idea  that  to  witness  a  per- 
formance by  Olga  Nethersole  was  an  intellectual  act 
of  which  to  be  proud  befotre  Harold.  "  She's  great, 
isn't  she?" 

"  I  have  heard  people  say  so,"  Harold  an- 
swered. 

They  were  picking  their  way,  arm  in  arm,  through 
the  crowd. 

"  Why,  haven't  you  seen  her?  "  Dan  inquired. 

"  I  have,"  said  Harold. 

"  And  don't  you  think " 

"  What  did  you  see  her  in?  "  Harold  asked. 


224      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  In  '  Camille.'  " 

"  But,  my  dear  boy,"  expostulated  Harold,  "  you 
mustn't  go  to  see  '  Camille.'  Nobody  goes  to  see 
that  now.  It's  like  loving  the  same  woman  twice: 
it's  just  not  done,  you  know." 

On  most  such  matters  Dan  would  have  accepted 
Harold's  word  as  final;  but  this  play  had  been  too 
directly  what  he  wanted.  He  uttered  the  pleased 
sigh  of  him  who  has  done  a  pleasurable  wrong  and 
has  convinced  himself  that  it  is  not  his  fault. 

"  I  like  it  anyhow,"  he  doggedly  contested. 

"But  it's  so  rural:  it's  like  being  on  time  for  a 
dinner  engagement." 

"  It's  true  to  life." 

"  True  to  life?  There  aren't  a  dozen  Dames  aux 
Camelias  in  the  world  and  never  were.  I'll  bet  you 
what  you  like  on  that." 

Well,  of  course,  the  junior  though  he  was,  Harold 
knew  a  great  deal  more  of  life  than  Dan  knew;  but 
Dan  was  far  from  being  convinced  in  this  particular 
detail.  He  shrank  from  revealing  what  was  in  his 
heart;  his  boyhood  had  taught  him  to  hide  the  things 
that  were  in  his  heart ;  but,  with  his  blue  eyes  bright- 
ening, he  replied: 

"There  ought  to  be." 

Harold  clapped  him  vigorously  on  the  back. 

"That's  splendid!"  he  announced.  "To  think 
that  this  afternoon  I  might  have  been  with  a  fellow 
who  can  say  such  a  thing,  instead  of  wasting  my  time 
on  one  of  those  teas  that  are  so  stupid  you  can  hear 
yourself  drink !  " 

Dan  detected  ridicule,  and,  as  always,  resented  it. 
This  was  what  came  from  revealing  one's  feelings. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      225 

"  The  tea  wasn't  at  Miss  Giddey's?"  he  mali- 
ciously inquired. 

At  once  Harold's  tone  altered.  His  round  face 
became  anxious. 

"  No,"  he  said. 

"  I  haven't  seen  her  since  I  introduced  you  to  her," 
said  Dan,  reflectively.  He  waited,  and  then,  as  Har- 
old remained  silent,  he  added:  "  not  once." 

"  Indeed,"  said  Harold. 

"  Queer,  isn't  it?  "  Dan  persevered. 

"  By  Jove !  "  said  Harold,  thrusting  his  gaze  into 
the  hurrying  traffic  of  the  street.  "  I  thought  that 
cab  would  run  over  that  messenger-boy!  " 

"  I  mean,"  continued  Dan,  perversely,  "  that  you'd 
think  two  people  knowing  each  other  couldn't  live 
so  long  in  New  York  without  meeting." 

Harold's  attention  seemed  still  to  be  attracted  by 
the  street. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "  I'm  working  on  a 
divorce  for  a  Lawnhurst  woman  that's  been  sepa- 
rated from  her  husband  for  two  years.  She's  been 
living  at  the  Waldorf  ever  since  she  left  him.  When 
we  went  to  serve  the  papers,  we  found  that  the  hus- 
band had  been  living  there  too  for  six  months,  and 
they'd  never  once  seen  each  other." 

"  Then  you  don't  see  Miss  Giddey?  "  asked  Dan. 
He  was  still  a  little  hurt,  and  Harold's  evasion  had 
the  usual  effect  of  evasions :  they  stimulated  curiosity. 

Harold  stopped  short. 

"  Look  here,"  said  he;  "  you  haven't  any  right 
to  an  answer,  but  I'm  aware  that  the  only  interesting 
questions  are  the  ones  that  we've  no  right  to  ask,  and 
so  I'll  tell  you  what  you  want  to  know.  I  do  see 


226      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Miss  Giddey  occasionally.  I  did  not  see  her  for  a 
time  because  of  a  matter  that  concerns  only  ourselves. 
But  she  now  permits  me  to  call  on  her  as  a  friend. 
We  are  friends.  Mark  that:  simply  friends." 

His  words  revived  in  Dan  the  impression  produced 
by  his  previous  defense  of  Madge. 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right,"  said  Dan,  shrugging  his 
shoulder.  "  Of  course  it  was  none  of  my  business. 
I  only  thought  you  might  sometimes  go  to  that  club 
she  told  us  about." 

"I  do  go,"  Harold  admitted;  "  but  not  often." 

"Where  is  the  place,  anyhow?"  asked  Dan. 

Harold  gave  him  the  address  that  Barnes  had  for- 
gotten. 

§  4.  What  the  younger  Richardson  said  was  a 
fair  measure  of  the  truth.  He  had  tried  to  put 
Madge  from  his  mind,  and  failed.  Then,  one  even- 
ing, he  had  returned  to  the  Giddey  flat. 

Madge  opened  the  door  wide,  but  she  started  when 
she  recognized  her  caller. 

"  Yes,"  said  Harold,  humbly;  "  it's  I."  He  spoke 
hurriedly  lest  she  close  the  door  before  he  could 
make  his  plea.  "  I  know  you're  alone  again.  I 
took  the  trouble  to  find  that  out.  But  I'm  thoroughly 
ashamed  of  myself  and  quite  harmless.  Mayn't  I 
please  come  in?  " 

His  boyish  face  was  so  uncommonly  serious,  the 
glib  trick  of  his  tongue  was  so  conspicuously  absent, 
that  he  altogether  disarmed  her. 

She  smiled;  but  she  caught  herself  in  time. 

uWhy?"  she  asked. 

"  Because — because  I  want  so  to  see  you." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      227 

"  Just  now  particularly?  " 

"  Always." 

uBut  this  evening?"  She  tried  hard  to  be 
severe.  "  About  anything  especial?" 

"  Yes,  right  away,  and  about  something  decidedly 
important." 

Without  further  comment,  she  preceded  him  to  the 
book-filled  parlor. 

"  Just  a  moment,"  she  said,  drawing  her  kimono 
about  her,  and  left  him  there. 

Harold  glanced  around  the  room.  It  was  so 
precisely  as  it  had  been  when  last  he  saw  it  that  he 
now  had  a  strange  sense  of  never  having  left  it. 
He  wandered  gingerly  about,  stepping  over  the  books 
that  lay  on  the  floor,  and  gazing  at  some  of  the 
volumes  that  filled  the  shelves. 

"  Now,"  said  Madge,  presently. 

She  had  returned  clad  in  a  soft  shirtwaist  and  a 
walking-skirt. 

"  Now,"  said  Harold.  He  was  too  busy  realizing 
the  significance  of  this  change  of  costume  to  say 
more. 

She  sat  calmly  in  the  Morris-chair  that  he  had 
once  wrecked.  She  nodded  to  a  chair  on  the  other 
side  of  the  center-table. 

"  You  sit  there,"  she  commanded. 

He  obeyed  meekly.  He  was  no  longer  himself. 
He  neither  felt  nor  spoke  as  that  Harold  whom  he 
had  thought  he  knew  so  well  was  accustomed  to 
speak  and  feel. 

"  I  think  it  is  going  to  rain,"  he  began,  and  cursed 
himself  for  a  fool. 

u  Yes  ?  "     Her  clear  eyes  were  steady  upon  him. 


228      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Yes,"  said  Harold.     "  It  felt  very  much  like  it" 

"  Indeed?     I  didn't  know.     I  haven't  been  out." 

He  waited,  trying  to  think  of  another  subject. 
He  could  think  of  none,  and,  as  the  pause  grew  un- 
endurable, he  presently  continued: 

"  I'm  quite  sure  it  will  rain  before  morning." 

1  You  are  something  of  a  weather-prophet?" 
asked  Madge.  She  did  not  take  her  eyes  from  him. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Harold.  It  was  as  if  a  spider 
could  become  entangled  in  a  web  of  its  own  weaving. 
He  could  not  break  through  the  strands  that  he  had 
thoughtlessly  wrapped  about  him.  "  But  you  don't 
mind  rain,  do  you?  "  he  inquired. 

Then  she  tore  the  web. 

"  You  said  you  wanted  to  see  me  about  something 
decidedly  important,"  she  smilingly  reminded  him. 
"  Was  it  to  learn  whether  I  minded  the  rain?  " 

He  was  free.  But  did  he  want  to  be  free?  His 
fair  face  colored. 

"  No,"  he  said,  "  it  wasn't." 

"  Then  perhaps — there's  no  hurry,  but  I'm  curi- 
ous." She  rested  a  cheek  upon  a  hand.  "  Perhaps 
you  will  tell  me  what  it  was." 

There  was  no  help  for  him  now.  He  had  to  go 
ahead. 

"  I  wanted  to  ask  you,"  he  bluntly  put  it  to  her, 
"  whether  you  won't  let  me  renew  our  old  friend- 
ship." 

Madge's  eyes  fell. 

"Was  it  ever  broken?"  she  asked. 

"  Oh,  don't  let's  fence  about  it,"  he  pleaded,  being 
tired,  for  his  part,  of  fencing.  "  It  was  broken,  and 
I  broke  it" 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      229 

She  looked  up,  smiling  again. 

"  You  broke  the  chair,"  she  said. 

"  I  was  a  fool." 

"  But  father  mended  the  chair." 

"  Then  let  me  " — he  clasped  his  hands  tight  in  his 
lap — "  let  me  mend  the  friendship.  I've  been  think- 
ing it  all  over.  I  believe  I've  thought  of  almost 
nothing  else.  I'm  ashamed  of  myself.  I'm  ashamed 
of  what  I  did  when  I  was  here  last.  I  don't  know 
why  I  did  it.  It  wasn't  the  real  me." 

"  But  I  told  you  then,"  she  objected,  "  that  I 
didn't  blame  you." 

"  I  know  you  did.  You  blamed  yourself.  As  if 
you  could  possibly  be  to  blame !  " 

"  I  was." 

"  You  weren't.  I — I — oh  "—he  opened  his 
hands — "  don't  think  me  a  brute,  will  you?  " 

She  took  his  glance  calmly. 

"  No,"  she  said.  "  I  won't.  I  never  did — 
really." 

"  But  I  was.  I  know  that.  Only  I'm  not  any 
more.  I'm  not.  I  have  been.  All  my  life  I  have 
been.  I  must  have  somehow  started  all  wrong. 
But  I'm  changed— indeed,  I  am.  YouVe  changed 
me.  And  I'll  never  be  again.  I  couldn't  be. 
You'll  forgive  me?  Please  say  you'll  forgive  me!  " 

"  If  there  is  anything  to  forgive,  yes." 

He  continued  his  appeal. 

"  There  is  so  much,"  he  said. 

"  No."  Madge  was  too  true  to  herself  to  follow 
him  there/  "  The  real  question  isn't  whether  I  for- 
give you.  The  real  question  is  whether  we  can  ever 
really  understand  each  other." 


230      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Understand  each  other?     But  if  you'll  only  take 
my  word  for  myself,  you  can't  help  understanding 


me." 


"And  you?"  she  asked.  "  Can  you  understand 
me?" 

4  You — you're  the  best  girl  in  the  world !     I  un- 
derstand that  all  right." 

"  Not  quite  the  best,"  she  smiled. 

"  You  are.     You " 

"  Please  don't  talk  that  way." 

He  gripped  his  emotions. 

"  Very  well,"  he  said,  his  blue  eyes  meeting  her 
squarely.  "  May  I  ask  you  one  question?  " 

"  As  many  as  you  like." 

"  One  will  do.  I'm  getting  along.  I'm  shifting 
for  myself.  I'm  a  full-fledged  lawyer  now;  I've  just 
— er — crossed  the  bar.  Some  day  I'll  have  a  little 
money  left  me,  but  if  I  didn't  I'd  still  be  fairly  all 
right.  So  what  I  want  to  ask  you  is  this :  Will  you 
marry  me?  " 

Madge's  glance  did  not  falter  now.  Her  eyes 
and  voice  were  both  fearless. 

"  No,"  she  said. 

"  But  look  here "  he  began. 

"  Wait,"  said  Madge.  "  Don't  think  I  blame  you 
for  that — for  what  happened  the  last  time  that  you 
were  here.  I  don't.  When  I  remember  it  at  all,  I 
blame  myself.  But  I  don't  love  you.  How  could 
I?  We  don't  honestly  know  each  other." 

"  We  can  learn,"  protested  Harold.  His  face 
was  very  earnest.  "  I  don't  want  to  hurry  you.  I 
don't  deserve  you  and  never  can.  I  know  that.  I 
only  ask  you  to  give  me  a  chance." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      231 

"  I  am  not  so  sure,"  said  the  girl,  "  that  we  can 
ever  know  each  other.  I  am  going  to  test  you; 
in  fact,  I'm  going  to  shock  you:  I  don't  altogether 
believe  in  weddings." 

Harold  laughed. 

"  Oh,  weddings  !  "  he  protested.  "  Nobody  en- 
joys a  wedding,  but  the  mother  of  the  bride:  she 
likes  a  good  cry.  We  shouldn't  have  any  fuss  and 
feathers." 

Madge's  voice  was  steady. 

"  I  was  sure,"  she  said,  "  that  we  didn't  under- 
stand each  other.  I  was  speaking  of  any  sort  of 
wedding-ceremony." 

'You  mean  you'd  want  a  magistrate?"  inquired 
Harold. 

"  I  mean,"  she  answered,  "  that  I  am  not  sure 
that  I  believe  in  any  sort  of  wedding  at  all.  I  mean 
that  I  don't  believe  much  in  marriage  as  you  under- 
stand the  word." 

Harold  sat  upright. 

"  You  what?  "  he  demanded. 

"  There  you  are,"  said  Madge,  almost  cheerfully. 
"  I  mean  that  I  believe  in  real  marriage,  but  that  I 
don't  believe  in  the  imitation  that  most  people  ac- 
cept. I  don't  believe  that  the  wife  should  be  the 
husband's  property— 

"  But,  my  dear  girl,  nobody  does!  " 

"  It  is  there  in  your  marriage-service.  In  effect, 
it  is  there  in  your  laws.  In  black  and  white." 

uOh,  well;  but  nobody  accepts  those  things  liter- 
ally." 

'  Then  they  shouldn't  exist." 

Harold  moved  uncomfortably. 


232      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  A  magistrate  could  cut  out  all  that  nonsense," 
he  said. 

"  From  the  law?"  asked  Madge. 

The  lawyer  got  to  his  feet. 

"  Do  you  think,"  he  inquired,  "  that  I'm  so  low 
down  as  ever  to  take  advantage  of  the  law?  " 

41  No.  I  only  think  that  perhaps  we  shouldn't 
consider  ourselves;  that  perhaps,  feeling  as  I  do,  I 
ought  never  to  marry  in  the  conventional  way,  if  only 
as  a  matter  of  personal  protest  against  a  system." 

He  advanced  a  step.     Then  he  stopped. 

"O,  Lord!"  he  said.  That  phrase  seemed  al- 
ways hanging  on  his  lips,  the  only  ever-ready  com- 
ment for  her  constant  surprises. 

She  looked  up  at  him. 

"  But  that  doesn't  matter,"  she  said:  "  for  you  see, 
I  don't  love  you,  Harold — not  that  way.  I  like  you ; 
I — Oh !  "  —her  voice  softened — u  I've  hurt  you  and 

I  don't  want  to  hurt  you!  Forgive  me.  I " 

She  too  rose.  "Why  must  we  spoil  things?"  she 
asked.  "  Why  can't  we  be  good  friends?  " 

For  a  long  minute  they  stood  facing  each  other. 

"  I'm  a  selfish  fool,"  said  Harold  at  last. 

"No,  no!"  she  objected. 

"  Yes,  I  am,  Madge :  a  selfish  fool.  I  thought 
you  might  maybe  care  enough  to  give  me  a  chance, 

and  I — I "  He  stopped,  because,  as  he  looked 

at  her,  he  saw  in  her  steady  eyes  the  miracle  of  tears. 
"  I've  been  a  brute  again !  "  he  declared. 

But  she  was  smiling  through  her  tears- 

"  I've  been  a  foolish  child,"  she  said.  "  There's 
nothing  that  we  need  be  unhappy  about,  is  there, 
Harold?" 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      233 

He  shook  his  curly  head. 

"  And  so,"  she  pursued,  "  we're  not  going  to  be 
unhappy,  are  we?  " 

"  No,"  said  Harold.     "  I  couldn't  be  unhappy,  if 
you  wanted  me  not  to  be."     He  sighed  a  little. 
"  Then  you're  not?  "  she  brightened. 
"  I  won't  be  if  you'll  let  me  be  a  friend." 

She  put  out  her  hand. 
"  A  good  friend,"  she  said. 

He  took  the  hand.     It  was  cool  and  steady,  like 
her  eyes. 

"  For  you  see,"  he  persisted,  "  you  do  like  me." 
"  Indeed  I  do." 

"  Even  if  it  isn't  in  just  the  way  I  hoped,  Madge." 
"  It  is  in  one  of  the  best  ways,"  she  answered. 
"  Perhaps,"   he   granted,   his   humility  departing. 
"  Anyhow  I'm  going  to  make  the  most  of  it — and, 
without  bothering  you,  I'm  going  to  keep  on  hoping." 
"  You  mustn't  do  that,"  Madge  cautioned. 
"  I  can't  help  it." 
"  Then  we  shall  quarrel." 
"  I  won't  obtrude  it." 
"  But  it  will  be  there." 
"  Always." 

"  Then  we  shall  be  sure  to  quarrel  over  all  sorts 
of  minor  differences  just  because  this  is  in  the  back- 
ground. 

"And  then,"  said  Harold,  the  last  ray  of  his 
humility  vanishing,  "because  this  is  in  the  back- 
ground, we  shall  make  up  again." 

She  drew  her  hand  away  and  bent  her  head. 

"  Good-night,"  said  Harold.     "  I'm  coming  again 


soon." 


234      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 
"  Good-night,"  she  answered.     "  Do." 

§  5.  Dan  had  thought  that  he  would .  look  up 
Madge ;  she  promised  to  be  interesting.  He  did  not 
at  all  believe  in  the  innocence  of  her  relation  with 
Harold;  he  admired  Harold's  protests,  but  he  did 
not  accept  them,  and  he  thought,  as  most  of  his  sort 
think,  that  the  girl  that  has  an  affair  with  one  man 
to  whom  she  is  not  legally  married  will  of  course 
be  ready  to  have  the  same  sort  of  affair  with  another 
man.  So  he  decided  to  meet  Madge  again,  and,  as 
he  did  not  want  to  meet  her  under  her  father's 
chaperonage,  he  elected  to  go  to  her  club. 

On  the  evening  after  he  had  secured  the  address, 
he  dined  alone  and  early,  and  reached  the  club  at 
eight  o'clock.  He  was,  however,  doubly  disappointed 
when  he  entered  the  little  room  of  which  Giddey's 
daughter  had  once  spoken  to  him.  The  place  pre- 
sented nothing  of  the  fervent  Bohemian  atmosphere 
that  he  had  expected,  and  Madge  was  not  there. 

The  club  was,  in  fact,  one  of  those  loose  organiza- 
tions not  uncommon  to  the  East  Side  of  New  York, 
which  spring  up  in  a  night  under  the  intoxication 
bred  by  a  small  group  of  young  persons  whom  chance 
throws  together,  and  each  of  whom  amazedly  finds 
that  there  are  other  people  in  the  world  that  think 
as  he  does.  Clubbishness  is  a  primary  quality  of 
the  human  animal:  when  two  or  three  people  find 
that  they  have  one  thing  in  common,  their  instinct 
demands  that  they  found  a  club  upon  it.  In  conse- 
quence, some  such  association  as  this  to  which  Madge 
belonged,  is  thrown  together,  runs  for  three  years 
or  five,  and  then,  if  it  has  not  for  its  foundation  that 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      235 

love  of  liquor  which  is  the  only  firm  groundwork  for 
any  club,  jealousies,  or  the  economic  ascent  or  de- 
scent of  its  individual  members,  begin  their  subtle 
work,  and  the  organization  disintegrates. 

Madge's  club  had  not  even  a  name.  It  owed  its 
being  to  the  fact  that  a  pair  of  "  workers  "  from  a 
college-settlement  had  one  evening  happened  into  a 
political  meeting,  had  lingered  to  dispute  with  some 
argumentative  Socialists  there,  had  gone  with  their ' 
adversaries  to  a  nearby  lunch-counter,  and  had  agreed 
to  foregather  and  end  the  argument  a  week  later. 
A  week  later  they  met,  but  parted  without  either  side 
being  convinced  and  with  a  third  gathering  arranged 
for.  At  the  third  gathering  it  became  evident,  even 
to  these  young  minds,  that 

"  He  that  complies  against  his  will 
Is  of  his  own  opinion  still  "; 

and  so,  when  somebody  suggested  that  the  entire  com- 
pany was  at  least  actuated  by  a  desire  for  the  world's 
betterment,  somebody  else  expressed  an  opinion  which, 
when  analyzed,  meant  that  there  was  no  way  so 
certain  to  better  the  world  as  to  form  a  dining-club 
for  that  purpose.  Accordingly  an  organization  was 
immediately  effected,  the  room  secured,  and  there, 
nightly,  any  number  from  one  to  twenty-five  of  the 
increased  membership  could  be  found  eating  at  the 
single  long  table  and  waited  upon  by  an  employee  of 
the  small  cafe  to  which  the  clubroom  properly  be- 
longed. 

It  was  'a  rather  bare  room,  cheaply  papered  in 
pink  and  pale  green.  In  each  of  two  of  the  walls 
were  two  windows  that,  when  their  chintz  curtains 


236       THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

were  not  drawn,  looked  upon  the  noisy  streets.  The 
other  walls  were  adorned  by  some  lithographs  of 
no  meaning  whatever,  by  the  door  of  entrance  and 
by  the  door  to  the  dumb-waiter  that  sent  food  from 
the  cafe  below. 

Dan  found  himself,  after  somebody  had  said 
"  Come  in  "  to  his  hesitant  knock,  facing  a  room^that 
was  empty  save  for  one  woman,  a  young  woman,  who 
was  seated  facing  him  from  the  end  of  the  table  and 
directly  under  one  of  the  three  gas-fixtures.  The 
woman,  he  saw,  was  engaged  in  finishing  a  solitary 
meal. 

"  Good-evening,"  said  the  woman,  her  spoon  in 
mid-air.  "  Won't  you  sit  down  ?  " 

Dan  saw  that  she  had  strong  shoulders  and  that 
she  carried  her  head  proudly.  Her  hair,  as  far  as 
he  could  observe  it  then,  was  brown  and  plentiful; 
but  what  most  impressed  him  were  her  large  eyes, 
brown,  steady,  inquiring.  Back  in  his  mind  there 
flashed  the  memory  of  a  richly  colored  window  of 
stained-glass  that,  as  a  boy,  he  had  once  seen  as  he 
passed  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Americus,  when  the 
evening  service  was  in  progress  there.  All  that  he 
could  now  recall  of  the  window  were  the  deep  red 
tones  of  the  drapery  about  its  central  figure,  and,  as 
this  woman  was  clad  in  a  tailor-made  suit,  he  won- 
dered at  the  connotation. 

u  I  was  looking  for  Miss  Giddey,"  he  said. 

"  For  Madge?  "  The  woman's  voice  was  a  con- 
tralto, full  and  with  a  pleasant  assurance  about  it. 
"  I  didn't  know  she  was  to  be  here  to-night;  but  do 
sit  down  and  wait." 

Dan  chose  a  chair  at  a  safe  distance,  and  gathered 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      237 

his  long  legs  close.  The  woman's  hair,  he  could 
now  see,  was  unlike  Madge's ;  it  was  silken  and  chest- 
nut. Her  features  were  delicate  and  regular;  the 
mouth  generous  and  firm;  the  nostrils  sensitive. 

'"  Yes,"  he  said.  He  was  a  little  uncomfortable, 
wondering  what  excuse  he  should  make  to  Madge 
should  she  appear.  "  She  gets  here  rather  often, 
doesn't  she?" 

The  woman  put  aside  her  emptied  coffee-cup. 

"  Every  little  while,"  she  answered. 

"  And  Harold  Richardson?  " 

"  You  mean  a  little  plump  man  who  talks  so  con- 
vincingly that  he  can  believe  in  himself  even  when 
he  is  alone?  " 

Dan  smiled.  He  acknowledged  that  this  descrip- 
tion was  not  wholly  unjust. 

"  That  might  be  Harold,"  said  Dan. 

"Well,  he  is  not  a  member,  but  Madge  brings 
him  sometimes.  You  know  him  well?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Dan,  "  very  well."  After  a  moment 
he  added  proudly:  "And  his  father,  E.  Q." 

"  Is  that  his  father?  "  asked  his  companion. 

"  Yes." 

"  I  didn't  know.  I  had  to  interview  E.  Q.  the 
other  day  on  some  reform-movement.  I  am  a  news- 
paper woman,"  she  explained. 

"  Then  you  had  no  trouble  in  making  him  talk," 
laughed  Dan. 

"Talk?  Yes,  as  if  somebody  had  left  him  a 
legacy  of  words,  and  he  was  trying  to  run  through  it. 
I  don't  like  him.  He  has  an  immaculate  outside, 
but  he  makes  you  feel  that  if  you  ever  got  under 
his  skin  you  would  find  him  sticky.  Besides,  he  is 


238      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

so  loud  about  the  use  of  his  handkerchief:  it's  posi- 
tively ostentatious." 

"  I  know.  I've  often  noticed  that."  Dan  began 
to  feel  at  home;  he  liked  this  woman's  sharp  way 
of  stating  things  that  he  had  observed  without  being 
conscious  of  his  observation.  "  And  E.  Q.  has  an- 
other funny  habit,"  he  went  on:  "I  mean  the  way 
he  says  phrases  you've  heard  everybody  say  before 
and  yet  he  gets  a  new  meaning  into  them  all  the 


time." 


"  I  don't  think  he  gets  a  new  meaning  into  any- 
thing," declared  the  reporter.  "  After  I'd  got  him 
to  say  the  sort  of  gush  that  I  was  paid  to  get,  I  tried 
to  point  out  to  him  that  reform  was  all  nonsense ;  that 
the  workers  were  in  the  majority,  and  that  the  major- 
ity ought  to  rule.  He  just  gasped  at  me  and  said: 
4  But  that  would  be  chaos — chaos !  '  " 

Dan  was  of  those  who  assume  the  natural  in- 
feriority of  the  feminine  brain.  Such  men  always 
smile  when  they  argue  with  a  woman:  Dan  smiled 
now. 

"Wouldn't  it  be  chaos?"  he  asked  as  one  might 
ask  a  child.  His  wide  blue  eyes  twinkled. 

"  Was  there  ever  a  worth  while  thing,"  the  re- 
porter countered,  "  made  from  anything  but  chaos? 
I'm  afraid  you  are  a  reactionary." 

"  You  wouldn't  hate  me  for  that?  "  chaffed  Dan, 
who  felt  uncertain  as  to  just  what  a  reactionary  was. 

"  Not  at  all,"  declared  his  hostess.  "  A  reac- 
tionary? By  all  means.  He  does  something.  But 
a  conservative — why,  that's  a  mere  peace-at-any-price 
manikin !  " 

"  Oh,  well,"  said  Dan,  sure  that  she  was  wrong, 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      239 

but  sure  that  he  could  not  prove  it;  "  you  can't  upset 
the  business  of  the  country  without  making  everybody 
suffer,  rich  and  poor.  You  talk  like  Madge's  father." 

The  woman's  fine,  brown  eyes  had  been  fixed  on 
him. 

"  And  you,"  she  said,  "  talk  as  if  you  had  been 
brought  up  in  a  small  town.  I  hope  you  don't  mind 
that,  for  I  was  brought  up  in  a  small  town  too." 

"  You're    right,"    admitted    Dan,    blushing.     "  I 


was." 


"  I  thought  so,"  said  the  reporter,  coolly.  "  I 
escaped  in  time.  My  town  was  one  of  those  where 
the  girls'  dancing  days  are  ended  at  eighteen,  because 
by  that  time  there  aren't  enough  boys  left  to  go 
'round:  they've  all  run  away  to  the  city.  I  went 
away  too,  but  far  earlier.  The  place  was  very  re- 
fined. It  had  never  been  so  vulgar  as  to  know  a 
boom ;  if  one  had  come  its  way,  my  town  would  have 
snubbed  it  immediately.  I  think  its  conventions 
would  have  driven  me  crazy." 

Dan  did  not  like  to  hear  a  respectable  woman  de- 
ride the  conventions.  He  wondered  if  this  woman 
were  respectable.  It  seemed,  from  her  appearance, 
impossible  that  she  should  not  be,  and  yet  he  rather 
hoped  that  she  was  not. 

"You  don't  believe  in  conventions?"  he  asked. 

She  drew  in  her  lower  lip,  doubtingly. 

"  At  all  events,"  she  said,  "  I  am  not  one  of  those 
who  believe  that  the  conventions  are  excellent  things 
for  other  people." 

"  Madge's  father  again!  "  said  Dan. 

"And  Mr.  Richardson  again!"  said  the  woman. 

"  I  don't  care,"  said  Dan,  delighting  in  a  new- 


24o      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

found  ability  to  lose  his  self-consciousness;  "  I  think 
women  ought  to  do  what's  right." 

"  And  men?"  suggested  this  woman,  still  looking 
at  him. 

"  Oh,  men " 

"  Yes,  I  know :  are  different.  But  they  are  not. 
No  convention  is  right  that  forces  women  one  way 
and  men  another.  Don't  you  see  that,  if  the  race 
is  to  have  any  salvation  in  this  or  any  other  world, 
we  must  marry  as  splendidly  as  we  dream?  " 

Dan  was  truthful  in  spite  of  himself. 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  he  said. 

"  Then,"  said  the  woman,  "  I  should  like  the  chance 
to  teach  you,  Danny  Barnes." 

*  Teach  me?  "  began  Dan;  and  then  his  jaw  fell. 
'  That's  my  name,"  he  said;  "  but  how  did  you  know 
it?" 

Her  brown  eyes  softened;  her  mouth  relaxed. 

u  Dear  me,"  she  sighed;  "  you  aren't  very  flatter- 
ing. You  haven't  much  changed;  I  knew  you  the 
moment  you  came  in.  I  suppose  I  have  dreadfully 
altered,  and  yet  I  am  younger  than  you  are." 

While  she  was  speaking,  he  had  a  sudden  memory 
of  moonlight  upon  moving  water  and  of  distant  hills 
leaping  darkly  out  of  darkness  as  a  stream  of  molten 
metal  hissed  into  a  river. 

"  I  am  Judith  Kent,"  she  concluded. 

Judith  Kent!  The  little  girl  with  the  pig  tail, 
the  school-girl  in  the  lower  class  with  whom  he  had 
watched  the  moon  rise  on  the  Susquehanna.  He  re- 
called her  splendid  mother,  who  had  first  been  de- 
scribed to  him  as  an  Episcopalian,  and  thus  he  ac- 
counted for  his  recent  recollection  of  the  church  win- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      241 

dow.  Judith  Kent !  He  was  not  embarrassed  by 
any  thought  of  his  boyish  romance  for  her.  There 
was  not  time  for  that  just  now.  He  was  only  glad 
to  see  her  again,  and,  if  he  were  at  all  embarrassed, 
it  was  by  his  tardiness  in  recognizing  her. 

"Oh  I"  he  cried.  "  Judith!  Of  course  you 
are!" 

"  At  least,"  she  said,  "  until  you  didn't  know  me, 
I  thought  I  was." 

He  got  up,  his  long  legs  stumbling  over  a  chair, 
took  her  hand,  arid  wrung  it.  His  good-natured  face 
glowed. 

*'  I'm  sorry "  he  stammered. 

"  Thank  you,"  said  she. 

"  I  mean  I'm  sorry  not  to  have  known  you.  I 
mean  it's  so  good  to  see  you  again.  How  long  have 
you  been  in  town  ?  What's  become  of  your  people  ? 
What  paper  are  you  working  for?  " 

He  sat  beside  her;  and,  while  the  waiter  came  in 
and  cleared  away  the  remnants  of  her  dinner,  she 
told  him  what  little  there  seemed  to  be  to  tell. 

"  We  left  Americus,"  she  said,  "  because — well, 
because  we  were  poor.  You  know  that." 

"  I  know,"  said  Dan,  lowering  his  eyes. 

"  And  then  in  Philadelphia  papa  didn't  do  very 
well.  He  couldn't  take  hold  again  and  he  lost  one 
position  after  another,  and  each  position  was  harder 
to  get  than  the  last.  It  worried  mother.  In  the  end, 
I  think  it  killed  her.  My  brother— you  remember 
Billy,  don't  you?" 

"  No,"  Said  Dan;  "if  I  ever  knew  you  had  a 
brother,  I've  forgotten  it." 

"  Of  course  you  would.     He  left  Americus  when 


242      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

we  were  both  very  small.  He  ran  away  and  went 
into  the  army — enlisted.  He's  there  now,  at  Fort 
Worth.  Well,  of  course  he  couldn't  help,  so  I  went 
into  newspaper  work  and,  when  father  died,  I  came 
here." 

It  hurt  Dan  to  hear  this;  it  always  hurt  him  to 
hear  of  human  suffering,  and  this  hurt  him  the  more 
because  he  remembered  the  former  condition  of  the 
Rents. 

"  But  you're  getting  on  all  right  now?  "  he  hope- 
fully inquired. 

Judith  again  drew  in  her  under  lip. 

"  A  woman  always  somehow  has  the  price  of  her 
whims,"  she  said;  "  it  is  only  the  necessities  that  balk 
her.  I  make  out  quite  as  well  as  most  working 
women;  far  better  than  a  great  many."  She  gave 
Dan  the  address  of  her  boarding-house  in  the  wilder- 
ness of  tjie  West  Forties.  u  You  must  come  to  see 
me  sometimes,"  she  said.  "  I  get  desperately  lonely." 

"You  have  Madge,  haven't  you?"  he  asked. 
"  Of  course  I  want  to  see  you  often;  but  I  was  won- 
dering about  how  it  has  been  with  you  till  now." 

"  Yes,"  Judith  told  him,  "  I  have  Madge.  I  met 
her  when  I  first  came  over,  at  a  meeting  that  I  was 
assigned  to.  I  have  her,  and,  as  you  guessed,  her 
father.  We're  very  good  friends.  He's  not  her 
real  father,  you  know;  he  adopted  her." 

"  Oh!  "  said  Dan.  That  explained  how  the  par- 
ent could  look  so  much  unlike  a  Jew  and  the  child 
could  be  so  Hebraic.  "  But  think  of  that  hard  old 
nut  adopting  anybody !  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  replied;  "  maybe  the  nut  isn't 
so  hard  under  his  shell.  He  was  at  some  sort  of 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      243 

open-air  labor  demonstration  once  in  Union  Square ; 
and  it  was  raided,  and  he  was  arrested  with  a  lot  of 
others.  While  he  was  at  the  station-house,  a  patrol- 
man brought  in  a  baby  in  a  basket  that  he  had  found 
on  his  beat.  It's  a  common  thing  enough ;  but  Giddey 
somehow  got  them  to  let  him  take  the  baby  home 
with  him  when  he  was  discharged  next  day.  Oh," 
she  went  on,  "  I  have  plenty  of  friends,  but  I  should 
like  to  meet  someone  from  Americus  sometimes.  You 
see,"  she  added,  "  I  was  happy  there." 

;(  There  aren't  many  people  from  Americus  in  New 
York,"  said  Dan,  largely.  "  Philadelphia  is  about 
as  big  a  town  as  people  from  Americus  can  stand. 
Still,  I  see  Lysander  Fry  every  once  in  a  while." 

Judith's  brow  contracted. 

"Who?"  she  asked. 

"  Lysander  Fry.  You  must  remember  him.  We 
used  to  call  him  Snagsie,  you  know." 

u  Yes,"  said  Judith,  "  I  do  remember  him — as 
Snagsie — but  I  don't  think " 

"  Oh,  he's  all  right  now,"  Dan  interrupted.  "  I 
know  his  people  weren't  much,  but  Fry's  got  on. 
He's  got  a  good  thing  of  it." 

"  Have  you  a  good  thing  of  it?  "  Judith  ques- 
tioned. 

"  Fair,"  lied  Dan;  "  but  I'm  going  to  have  a 
better.  I'll  tell  you  about  it." 

He  had  forgotten  all  his  plans  concerning  Madge. 
He  never  afterward  definitely  remembered  them. 


XV 


NOBODY  else  came  in  until  after  nine  o'clock, 
and  then  it  was  only  Madge  and  Harold  that 
appeared.  By  this  time,  Judith  and  Dan 
were  once  more  such  good  friends  that  both  forgot 
that  Dan  had  come  there  to  seek  Madge,  and  Harold, 
with  his  usual  ease  of  manner,  appeared  to  accept 
Dan's  presence  as  in  every  way  natural. 

"  Hello,"  he  said,  unwinding  a  large  muffler  from 
about  his  short  neck.  "  Not  breaking  up  anything, 
are  we?  " 

"  Not  in  the  least,"  replied  Judith.  She  rose  and 
went  forward  to  meet  them,  walking  with  a  fine,  free 
stride.  Dan  saw  that  she  was  tall,  nearly  as  tall  as 
he  was,  and  that  she  had  the  grace  of  carriage  that 
he  remembered  in  her  mother.  "  We  have  just  re- 
discovered each  other,  that  is  all.  We  come  from 
the  same  town." 

"What?"  asked  Harold,  with  all  the  New 
Yorker's  scorn  of  anything  not  between  the  East 
River  and  the  Hudson,  and  all  the  New  Yorker's  ig- 
norance thereof.  "Columbus?  Balboa?  Cabot? 
What's  its  name?  You  don't  both  hail  from  there? 
Dan  I  could  think  it  of,  but  not  you,  Miss  Kent." 

"  I'm  afraid  he  doesn't  know  such  towns,"  sug- 
gested Madge. 

"Don't  I?"  said  Harold,  whose  knowledge  was 
based  mostly  on  heresay  evidence.  "  Indeed,  yes. 

244 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      245 

The  train  staggers  up  to  the  station,  stops  reluctantly, 
and  runs  away  glad.  There's  nothing  to  do  all  day. 
There's  nothing  to  do  at  any  time  but  get  drunk,  and 
if  you  get  drunk  to  kill  time  during  the  unendurable 
morning,  you've  wasted  the  only  means  of  making  the 
afternoon  bearable." 

Madge  tried  to  divert  him. 

"  It's  not  too  late  to  eat?"  she  asked  of  Judith, 
and  when  Judith  said  that  she  supposed  it  was  not, 
Madge  inquired  of  Harold:  "Aren't  you  hungry?" 

"Rather,"  he  said;  "I've  a  whole  suite  to  let. 
But  none  of  your  stupid  small-town  meals  with  noth- 
ing indigestible  in  the  menu.  Eh,  Miss  Kent?  " 

Judith  was  feeling  kindly  toward  Americus. 

"  I  am  sure  it  won't  be  that,"  she  said.  "  In  my 
old  home,  we  dined  at  noon  on  week-days." 

"  Don't  be  stupid,  Harold,"  Madge  warned  him. 

"  1  will  be  stupid,"  Harold  remonstrated.  "  The 
only  way  to  be  original  is  to  be  stupid.  All  the  clever 
things  have  been  said  so  long  ago." 

"All  your  clever  things  have,"  remarked  Judith. 

But  Harold  was  not  stupid.  He  sat  down  and  ate 
heartily  and,  being  one  of  those  rare  personalities 
which  know  the  sort  of  conversation  that  best  accom- 
panies food,  he  kept  his  companions  interested  by 
taking  sides  with  all  against  himself  and  by  defending 
himself  against  all.  He  agreed  with  Judith  that  con- 
struction never  built  anything  enduring  until  destruc- 
tion had  first  cleared  the  way;  he  told  Madge  that 
she  was  a  rebel  only  because  her  father  was,  that 
she  was  a  radical  because  of  her  conservatism ;  he  in- 
sisted to  Dan  that  Society  in  a  town  like  Americus 
resembled  a  pensive  poem  by  Locker-Lampson,  and 


246      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

he  narrated  his  one  experience  of  life  in  such  a  place, 
where  his  laundress  told  the  neighbors  just  what  he 
had  in  the  wash  and  how  "  hard  "  he  was  on  his 
clothes. 

Dan  listened  and  speculated  a  little  as  to  what  it 
was  that,  beneath  this  surface,  was  changing  in  Har- 
old; but  he  kept  his  eyes  for  Judith,  saying  that  it  was 
good  to  see  her  again.  He  remembered  his  early 
romance.  Of  course,  he  persuaded  himself,  he  was 
not  in  love  with  her  now.  Of  course,  he  reasoned, 
he  never  had  been  really  in  love  with  her.  The  old 
desire  was  a  dream ;  the  present  quest  for  a  Dame  aux 
Camelias  was  a  quest  of  reality.  But  it  was  pleasant 
to  meet  Judith.  He  acknowledged  that  her  perpetual 
talk  was  as  refreshing  as  were  most  women's  less 
frequent  silences.  What  he  did  not  acknowledge, 
but  what  he  no  less  deeply  felt,  was  that  she  stood 
for  something  that  he  did  not  want  wholly  to  lose. 

He  went  home  that  night  feeling  better  for  this 
meeting  and  a  little  ashamed  of  what,  he  was  begin- 
ning to  realize,  he  had  become.  He  had  not  hinted 
to  her  at  the  inmost  facts  about  himself.  They  were 
far  more  important  than  were  any  other  facts  to  the 
formation  of  a  true  understanding  concerning  him; 
but  then  they  were  not  of  the  few  sorts  that  it  was 
right  to  discuss  with  a  respectable  woman.  Dan  won- 
dered whether  this  was  one  of  the  reasons  for  the 
charm  of  women  that  are  not  respectable.  He  won- 
dered, too,  what  Judith  would  have  said  if  he  had 
told  her  of  these  facts.  Not  that  he  would  tell  her. 
Still,  he  resolved  that  he  would  soon  see  her  again. 

As,  half  asleep,  he  lay  in  bed  that  night,  his  drowsy 
brain  languidly  revolved  about  the  thought  of  Judith. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      247 

There  was  something  in  her  womanhood  that  at- 
tracted him  more  powerfully  than  anything  which  her 
girlhood  had  offered — something  that  he  could  not 
understand,  but  that  was  not  the  mere  growth  pro- 
produced  by  passing  time.  Yet  he  remembered,  just 
then,  much  of  their  old  romance :  the  unvoiced  affec- 
tion, the  illusive  and  shimmering  joy,  the  glow  of 
dawn.  Suppose  that  he  and  Judith  had  never  left 
Americus;  suppose  that  the  Kents  had  never  become 
poor;  suppose  that  he,  growing  up  by  Judith's  side, 
had  never  lost  whatever  it  was  that  he  had  lost  to 
Irma ;  suppose  .  .  . 

§  2.  Nevertheless,  the  space  that  intervened  be- 
tween this  meeting  of  Dan  and  Judith  and  their  next 
was  longer  than  he  had  at  first  anticipated,  for  his 
search  after  a  new  type  of  woman  was  of  considerably 
more  consequence  than  his  renewal  of  acquaintance 
with  an  old  friend.  When  he  did  next  encounter  Ju- 
dith, he  had  on  his  arm  a  thin,  loud,  highly  rouged 
person  whose  profession  no  one  could  mistake. 

Dan  was  annoyed.  There  were  some  other 
"  good  "  girls  of  his  acquaintance,  the  sisters  of  fel- 
low-clerks, before  whom,  when  they  saw  him  in  such 
company,  he  would  have  felt  proud ;  but  the  approach 
of  Judith  revived  all  his  old  sense  of  the  iniquity  of 
his  course.  He  tried  to  slink  by  her  unobserved,  was 
angry  when  he  failed  and  was  relieved  only  when  she 
passed  him  with  a  conventional  and  unperturbed  bow. 

This  inopportune  meeting  and  the  events  that  im- 
mediately fallowed  long  postponed  his  intended  calls 
upon  her. 

For,  a  week  later,  his  fears  reawakened.    He  de- 


248      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

layed;  he  tried  to  convince  himself  that  these  fears 
were  as  groundless  as  their  predecessors,  as  if  he  could 
cure  an  illness  by  argument;  but  the  trouble  pro- 
gressed, and,  by  the  time  that  Dan  acknowledged  the 
truth,  it  had  obtained  a  firm  grip  upon  his  system. 

His  chief  sensation  was  that  of  sheer  fright.  He 
might  have  contracted  this  plague  from  one  of  sev- 
eral sources.  He  dared  not  speak  of  his  condition  to 
any  of  his  friends;  he  dared  not  consult  a  reputable 
physician.  The  only  information  that  he  had  ever 
received  had  come  from  the  jokes  of  brokers'  clerks 
and  the  advertisements  of  quacks. 

He  turned  first  to  these  advertisements,  read  many, 
and  chose  one  that  offered  treatment  by  mail  "  in  a 
plain  envelope,"  and  that  promised  to  regard  all  com- 
munications as  confidential.  'Dan  sent  the  dollar  re- 
quested and  received  in  return  a  small  phial  of  pink 
liquid  and  a  printed  letter  advising  him  to  call  at  the 
company's  local  office.  The  fact  that  the  letter  was  a 
printed  form  almost  convinced  him  of  the  worthless- 
ness  of  the  medicine,  and  the  use  of  the  medicine 
quickly  completed  this  conviction.  He  did  not  call 
at  the  office,  but  the  secrecy  that  had  been  guaranteed 
was  scarcely  observed.  The  manufacturers  probably 
sold  to  other  firms  the  list  of  their  correspondents, 
for  Dan  continued  to  receive  by  post  advertisements 
of  similar  "  cures  "  from  various  sources  for  several 
years  thereafter. 

He  summoned  all  his  courage,  and  one  day  stopped 
at  an  office  on  the  door  of  which  he  had  often  no- 
ticed a  brass  plate  announcing  that  its  owner  was  a 
"  specialist  in  the  diseases  of  men."  By  the  presence 
of  that  statement  the  plate  also  announced  that  its 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      249 

owner  was  a  charlatan,  but  that  was  a  sign  that  Dan 
was  unable  to  read.  He  entered,  was  told  that  his 
trouble  was  one  of  the  least  and  most  common  of  the 
great  diseases  that  spread  from  the  economic  waste- 
heap,  was  informed  that  it  was  really  no  worse  than 
a  cold  in  the  head,  and  was  immediately  subjected 
to  a  course  of  treatment  that  caused  him  excruciating 
agony. 

Gradually  he  learned  that  the  ill  which  was  "  no 
worse  than  a  cold  in  the  head  "  was  at  all  events 
enduring.  He  returned  daily  and  suffered  daily.  He 
had  ugly  packages  concealed  in  his  clothes  and  about 
his  bedroom.  He  could  not  sleep ;  he  grew  thin  and 
pale  and  nervous.  He  paid  bills  that  constantly 
mounted  higher,  and,  late  in  December,  at  the  end 
of  three  months,  the  "  specialist "  presented  him  with 
another  and  still  more  staggering  bill  on  the  same  day 
that  his  book  came  back  from  the  savings-bank  with 
the  sum  of  only  seven  dollars  and  fifty  cents  on  the 
credit  side. 

When  he  was  leaving  the  office  of  the  "  specialist  " 
next  day,  he  gasped  out  an  appeal. 

"  You  won't  mind  if  I  put  off  payment  for  a  little 
while,  will  you?  "  he  asked. 

But  the  bearded  "  specialist "  shook  his  head. 
The  nature  of  his  practice  was  such  that  he  usually 
demanded  cash  payments;  he  had  already  been  un- 
commonly lenient  with  Dan.  Would  he  accept  the 
pay  in  installments?  He  really  could  not  do  that 
while  the  continued  treatment  was  costing  more  each 
week  than  the  sum  that  Dan  suggested  toward  the 
satisfaction*' of  the  bill  for  services  already  rendered. 
If  there  was  not  payment,  the  treatment  must  cease, 


250      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

and  this  was  too  bad,  since  the  trouble  was  now  on 
the  point  of  yielding.  Why  didn't  Dan  borrow 
against  his  salary?  There  were  many  money-lenders 
in  New  York  who  made  advances  of  that  nature; 
Dan  ought  to  consult  one  of  them. 

§  3.  Dan  telephoned  to  Harold  to  meet  him  that 
evening,  but  when  Harold  appeared  it  seemed  im- 
possible to  broach  the  all-important  subject. 

"What'll  you  have  to  drink?"  asked  Harold,  as 
they  entered  a  barroom. 

*  This  is  on  me,"  said  Dan,  "  and  if  you  don't 
mind,  I'll  take  nothing  but  some  seltzer." 

Harold's  round  face  looked  grave. 

"  What's  wrong?  "  he  demanded.  "  You  do  look 
run  down,  you  know." 

"  I'm  just  dieting,"  said  Dan.  "  I  haven't  been 
feeling  well  lately." 

"  Cutting  out  alcohol  looks  suspicious,"  Harold 
rallied  him.  "  I  think  I  know  what's  the  matter  with 
you." 

"  It's  not  that,"  Dan  protested,  flushing.  "  I've 
just  had  a  lot  of  indigestion,  and  the  doctor  made 
me  swear  off  for  a  while."  He  knew  that  he  must 
get  away  from  this  dangerous  topic.  "  Have  you 
been  around  to  that  club  lately?  " 

"  Not  very  lately.  I  was  there  two  or  three  weeks 
ago." 

"Did  you  see  Miss  Kent?" 

"  No.  Fact  is,  I'm  not  wild  about  Miss  Kent. 
She  has — oh,  not  the  air  of  a  girl  always  expecting 
to  be  made  love  to,  but  the  air  of  always  expecting 
you  to  kiss  her,  and  of  not  expecting  to  like  it." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      251 

The  talk  drifted  on  until  the  hour  of  the  departure 
of  Harold's  train  approached. 

Only  then  did  Dan  mention  what  had  all  evening 
been  uppermost  in  his  mind.  He  said  that  he  had 
been  betting  on  the  races  and  had  lost  money  that  was 
due  for  board,  lodging,  and  clothes. 

"  Hard  luck!  "  said  Harold;  "  but  I'm  just  about 
where  you  are.  We  free  Americans  are  all  con- 
strained to  wear  better  clothes  than  our  purses  war- 
rant; we  are  liars  in  our  hats  and  coats;  and  I'm 
not  exempt.  If  I  wasn't  in  debt  and  busted,  I'd  lend 
you  a  little." 

"Oh,  I  didn't  want  that!  "  said  Dan.  "  I  only 
wanted  you  to  tell  me  of  a  place  where  I  could  bor- 
row. I  heard  there  were  a  lot  of  firms  that  didn't 
ask  securities,  and  I  thought  you  might  know  of  one." 

Harold  appeared  relieved. 

u  I  know  just  the  man  you  want,"  he  said.  "  He's 
a  fellow  named  Asche,  and  he  lives  out  our  way, 
though  his  office  is  in  town.  I'm  the  only  one  near 
Lawnhurst  that  doesn't  cut  him.  I  can't,  because  I've 
borrowed  from  him.  Still,  he  seems  to  like  me. .  I'll 
give  you  a  note  to  him.  You  really  don't  need  one, 
but  perhaps,  if  I  give  you  one,  you  can  deal  with 
Asche  direct.  Here  you  are." 

He  tore  a  leaf  from  his  note-book,  scribbled  on  it, 
and  handed  it  to  Dan,  who  looked  at  the  address. 

"  Van  Voorne  &  Co.?  Is  Asche  the  silent  part- 
ner?" 

"  He's  silent,  all  right,"  said  Harold,  "  but  he's 
the  whole  .firm,  you  bet.  He's  *  Van  Voorne '  and 
1  And  '  and  'Co.,'  too.  There  isn't  any  Van  Voorne 
and  never  was.  Asche  merely  thought,  I  suppose, 


252      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

that  some  sort  of  Knickerbocker-Dutch  name  would 
sound  well." 

§  4.  Dan  found  the  loan-offices  next  day.  They 
were  in  a  fairly  respectable  office  building  on  Broad- 
way, and  the  counting-room  was  fitted  with  new  fur- 
niture. On  the  expensive  long  benches  and  comforta- 
ble chairs  were  seated  a  number  of  people  that  looked 
neither  expensive  nor  comfortable;  but  they  faced  a 
highly  polished  counter  surmounted  by  a  wire-netting 
at  a  small  window  in  which  sat  a  neat  and  pretty, 
though  rather  hard-faced  girl  chewing  gum. 

"  I  want  to  see  Mr.  Asche,"  said  Dan. 

"  What  about?  "  asked  the  girl.  She  had  a  com- 
petent air  and  a  pleasant  smile. 

Dan  presented  Harold's  letter  of  introduction, 
which  the  girl  calmly  proceeded  to  read. 

"  I'm  afraid  Mr.  Asche  is  not  in,"  said  the  girl, 
when  she  had  finished  her  reading.  "  What  do  you 
want?" 

"  I  want,"  repeated  Dan,  taking  a  tight  hold  upon 
his  dignity,  "  to  see  Mr.  Asche." 

The  girl  lowered  her  voice  and  smiled  again. 

"Isn't  there  anything  I  can  do  for  you?"  she 
asked. 

Dan  shook  his  head.     "  I  don't  think " 

**  If  it  was  about  borrowing  money "  suggested 

the  girl. 

Dan  swallowed  his  pride. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  that's  it." 

'  Then  it  won't  be  necessary  for  you  to  see  Mr. 
Asche,"  said  the  girl.  "  I  think  I  can  attend  to  it  for 
you.  Mr.  Asche  hardly  ever  sees  anybody.  Won't 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      253 

you  please   sit   down   for  a   minute   and  wait  your 
turn?  "     She  was  very  polite. 

Dan  found  a  seat  between  a  street-car  conductor 
and  a  young  woman  that  looked  as  if  she  might  be 
a  bookkeeper  in  some  wholesale  establishment.  One 
by  one,  the  people  about  him  rose,  went  to  the  win- 
dow, spoke  to  the  girl  in  whispers,  were  answered 
in  a  low  tone,  and  then  slouched  out. 

"  Now,"  said  the  girl  at  last,  and  nodded  to  Dan. 

He  came  forward. 

44  What's  the  name?" 

"  Daniel  W.  Barnes,"  he  answered,  and  found  his 
voice  dropping  to  the  key  of  those  that  had  preceded 
him. 

"  And  your  home  address,  please?  " 

He  gave  it. 

"You  live  there,  Mr.  Barnes?  I  mean  really 
live,"  she  smiled,  "  or  just  board?  " 

Dan  smiled,  too. 

"  I  just  board,"  he  said. 

She  was  swiftly  writing  his  answers  on  a  blank 
form  that  was  before  her.  There  was  a  pile  of  forms, 
all  filled  out,  at  her  elbow. 

"  You  are  employed?  " 

"  Yes." 

"Where,  please?" 

"  At  O'Neill's  &  Silverstone's." 

"What  are  they,  Mr.  Barnes?" 

"  Brokers." 

At  her  request,  he  told  her  his  age,  length  of 
service,  and  salary. 

"  And,"  she  asked,  with  raised  eyebrows,  "  how 
much  did  you  want  to  borrow?  " 


254      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Dan  hesitated. 

"  I'd  like  to  have  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,"  he 
said. 

To  him  it  seemed  a  good  deal  to  ask,  but  the  girl 
treated  the  request  as  if  it  were  a  commonplace.  She 
transcribed  the  figure. 

"  All  right,"  she  said.     "  Come  in  day  after  to- 


morrow." 


"  Oh,"  sighed  Dan,  "  you  can't  let  me  have  it  to- 
day?" 

The  girl  remonstrated  sweetly. 

"Now  really,  Mr.  Barnes,  don't  you  see?"  she 
inquired,  shifting  the  gum  in  her  mouth.  "  So  many 
people  have  such  ideas !  But  of  course  we  don't  know 
who  our  clients  are.  We've  got  to  look  them  up 
first." 

He  did  see.  It  was  an  absurd  mistake  to  be  made 
by  a  broker's  clerk.  As  if  a  money-lender  were  the 
Charity  Organization  Society! 

"  I  hope,  though,"  he  uneasily  protested,  "  that 
you  won't  let  my  employers  know  about  this — this 
transaction.  It  might  cost  me  my  position." 

u  Don't  worry  about  that,"  she  brightly  reassured 
him.  "  We  never  let  the  employers  know;  that's  our 
business.  You  come  'round  day  after  to-morrow. 
Good-day,  Mr.  Barnes." 

§5.  In  forty-eight  hours  Dan  returned.  When 
he  left,  he  had  put  his  signature  to  several  papers. 
One  was  a  ninety-days'  note  apparently  issued  not  by 
Van  Voorne  &  Co.,  but  by  a  Mr.  Henry  Brown,  with 
whom  Van  Voorne  &  Co.  were  supposed  to  have  ne- 
gotiated the  loan.  Another  was  an  assignment  of 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       255 

Dan's  salary  with  an  order  on  O'Neill  &  Silverstone 
to  pay  it  to  "  Henry  Brown  "  should  the  borrower 
fail  to  make  reimbursement.  Dan  even  had  a  vague 
idea  that  an  acknowledgment  which  he  made  was  at- 
tached to  a  power-of-attorney  authorizing  the  shad- 
owy Mr.  Brown  to  confess  judgment.  Finally,  for 
the  notary  that  affixed  his  seal,  for  some  attorney  or 
other  that  drew  the  instruments,  and  for  Van  Voorne 
&  Co.  that  had  investigated  Dan's  resources  and  ne- 
gotiated the  loan  with  Mr.  Brown,  there  were  so 
many  heavy  fees,  commissions,  and  "  expenses  "  en- 
tailed that  the  client  was  really  paying  a  rate  of  inter- 
est at  least  thrice  as  high  as  the  law  allowed. 

"  I  suppose,"  thought  Dan,  "when  these  loans  be- 
come due,  the  average  borrower  can  pay  only  the 
interest,  or  a  little  on  account  of  the  principal,  and 
that  then  the  whole  process  is  gone  over  again." 

And  Dan  was  correct. 


XVI 

DAN  paid  his  quack,  but  was  not  cured.     In- 
stead, certain  complications  manifested  them- 
selves, and  he  began  to  suspect  that  the  man 
who  was  treating  him  either  could  not  cure  him  or 
did  not  want  to.     So  he  changed  to  another  "  spe- 
cialist "  of  similar  qualifications  and,  later,  to  still  an- 
other.    He  found  that,  to  all  of  them,  fees  seemed 
more  important  than  treatment.     He  grew  no  better 
and,  being  unable  to  pay  the  principal  of  his  Van 
Voorne  &  Co.  loan,  he  was  forced  to  a  renewal. 

This  was  in  1898,  the  year  of  the  Spanish  War; 
and  the  war  was  on  all  men's  tongues.  Battle  had 
long  been  in  the  air,  and  from  the  moment  that  the 
destruction  of  the  Maine  in  Havana  harbor  was  an- 
nounced, the  whole  world  knew  that  an  armed  con- 
flict was  inevitable.  Some  men  said  that  there  were 
senators  in  Washington  who  held  bonds  of  the  newly 
declared  Cuban  Republic;  others  asserted  that  the 
great  capitalists  of  New  York  were  interested  for 
their  own  reasons  in  having  Spain  driven  from  her 
Caribbean  and  Pacific  possessions,  and,  all  about  him 
in  the  Street,  Dan  saw  the  gamblers  playing  upon  the 
patriotic  and  humanitarian  emotions  of  their  fellow- 
countrymen  in  order  to  lower  stocks  and  insure  the 
"  Insiders  "  an  easy  chance  to  buy  at  a  low  figure 
what  was  sure  soon  to  sell  at  a  high  one.  Yet  the 
politicians  waved  the  flag,  the  newspapers  sounded 

256 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      257 

a  daily  call  to  arms,  and  the  widespread  conscience 
of  the  nation,  reasoning  that,  whatever  private  for- 
tune was  to  be  increased,  the  public  cause  was  worthy, 
roused  itself  to  end  the  atrocities  of  Bourbon  rule  in 
Cuba  and  avenge  the  killing  of  American  seamen 
upon  the  country  supposed  to  be  guilty. 

Dan  felt  proud  of  his  nationality.  He  believed  in 
republicanism  and  hated  monarchy.  More  than  that, 
he  was  an  ardent  pupil  in  the  My-country-right-or- 
wrong  school  of  patriotism.  We  would  conquer  be- 
cause we  could ;  we  would  teach  these  foreign  peoples 
to  respect  us ;  we  would  show  them  that  ours  was  not 
only  the  greatest  commercial  nation,  but  also  the 
greatest  fighting  nation;  and  we  were  sadly  lenient 
when  we  did  not  arrest  and  try  all  native  opponents 
of  the  war  on  a  charge  of  treason.  Dan  wanted  to 
go  to  the  war.  He  would  not  have  hesitated  about 
it ;  but  his  doctors  persuaded  him  that  he  could  never 
pass  the  physical  examination ;  and  so  all  that  he  could 
do  was  to  stand  in  the  crowds  on  Broadway  and 
watch  the  troops  march  by,  cheering  until  he  was 
hoarse  for  the  mere  boys  that  filled  the  ranks,  and 
watching  the  flying  colors  and  listening  to  the  stirring 
bands  with  his  mouth  tight  and  tears  in  his  eyes. 

Harold  counted  himself  more  lucky.  He  had  a 
quarrel  with  Madge,  who  insisted  upon  condemning 
the  Cuban  uprising  as  a  merely  bourgeois  revolution 
and  upon  branding  American  interference  as  a  piece 
of  capitalistic  selfishness;  and  then  he  inveigled  his 
father  into  securing  him  a  commission  as  lieutenant  in 
a  volunteer  regiment.  For  several  days  he  showed 
himself  at  the  cafes  that  used  to  know  him,  splendid 
in  his  blue  uniform.  Madge,  upon  whom  he  called 


258       THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

repeatedly,  refused  to  see  him ;  but  he  contented  him- 
self with  composing  and  dispatching  to  her  a  dignified 
and  patriotic  note  of  farewell,  carefully  modeled  upon 
Lovelace's  adieu  to  Lucasta,  and  was  ordered  to 
Chicamauga,  where  the  ignorance  of  officers  and  the 
thefts  of  contractors  were  as  deadly  as  they  usually 
are  known  to  be,  killed  more  men  all  about  him  than 
were  shot  in  Cuba  and  provided  enough  fatalities  to 
satisfy  even  a  young  lieutenant  that  wanted  to  be 
at  the  front.  Finally,  he  contracted  the  fever  him- 
self; was  brought  home  to  Lawnhurst;  escaped  death; 
was  received  by  his  parents  as  a  hero;  appeared  on 
the  streets  a  yellow  skeleton,  and  straightway  pro- 
ceeded to  grow  fatter  than  he  had  ever  yet  been. 

§  2.  He  was,  however,  still  worn  and  hollow-eyed 
when,  one  evening,  he  ran  away  from  his  doctor  and 
rang  the  bell  at  the  door  of  the  Giddey  flat. 

Old  Gideon  himself  appeared  and  stared  hard  at 
the  caller. 

"  Well,  well,"  he  said,  in  his  high  voice,  as  Har- 
old stood  silent.  "  What  is  it?  What  is  it?  " 

Harold  was  dressed  in  a  uniform  that  now  hung  as 
loosely  upon  him  as  Giddey's  suit  hung  upon  Gideon. 

"  Don't  you  know  me?  "  he  wailed.  "  I'm  Harold 
Richardson." 

"  Harold "  Gideon  took  another  look. 

"  Bless  my  soul !  So  it  is.  Come  in.  My  eyes  are 
getting  worse  every  day." 

"  Oh,"  said  the  caller,  miserably,  "  it's  not  that. 
It's  the  bad  food  and  the  fever.  They've  about  done 
for  me." 

"  Come  in,"  insisted  Giddey. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      259 

But  Harold  hesitated. 

"  Where's  Madge?  "  he  asked. 

u  She  went  out.  I  think  she  went  to  her  club. 
Come " 

"  Then  I  guess  I'll  go  there,  too,"  Harold  inter- 
rupted. 

He  had  plunged  down  the  stairs  before  Gideon 
could  remonstrate. 

§  3.  The  members  of  Madge's  club  entered  the 
building  in  which  that  club  had  a  room  by  a  narrow 
door  on  a  side  street.  It  was  while  she  was  fumbling 
with  the  lock  of  this  door  that  Harold  overtook  the 
girl  whom  he  sought. 

"  Madge!  "he  cried. 

The  electric  light  at  the  corner  shed  its  ghastly  blue 
rays  upon  him. 

"You!"  She  started.  Her  eyes  were  wide.  She 
hesitated,  came  forward,  one  hand  outstretched. 

"  What's  left  of  me,"  said  the  hero,  magnificently. 

She  was  dressed  in  her  usual  outdoor  costume  of 
soft  shirt  and  walking-skirt;  and  Harold,  as  he  looked 
at  her,  slowly  felt  that  she  was  so  unchanged  as  to 
make  all  the  more  keenly  evident  those  changes  which 
his  abortive  attempt  at  soldiering  had  wrought  in 
him. 

"  I'm  glad  you  got  back  safely,"  she  said.  She 
released  his  hand. 

"Safely!"  he  bitterly  echoed.  "I  never  had  a 
chance  at  any  fighting!  " 

"I  know,"  she  returned;  "and  I  am  gladder  of 
that  than"  of  anything  else." 

He  thought  that  he  tasted  consolation. 


260      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  So  you  worried  for  fear  I'd  be  shot?"  he  in- 
quired, with  what  he  took  to  be  military  superiority. 

"  A  little,"  she  admitted;  "  but  I  worried  more  for 
fear  you  would  shoot  somebody  else." 

Harold  gaped. 

"What?"  he  demanded. 

"  Of  course,"  she  serenely  pursued,  "  I  knew  that 
you  were  an  officer  of  some  sort 

"  I  wrote  you  that.     I  told  you  before  I  started." 

"  Yes.  Well,  I  knew  that.  I  knew  that  officers 
didn't  personally  do  much  shooting,  and  I  imagined 
that  you  were  a  poor  shot  anyhow,  and  probably 
couldn't  hit  anybody  if  you  had  the  chance.  Still,  I 
suppose  that,  if  one  only  shoots  often  enough,  one  is 
bound  to  hit  something  sooner  or  later,  and  I  am  too 
fond  of  you  to  want  you  to  be  a  murderer." 

She  spoke  hurriedly  in  the  nervous  excitement  of 
this  unexpected  meeting;  but  Harold  attended  to  no 
more  than  her  mere  words. 

This  greeting  was  by  no  means  what  he  had  ex- 
pected. He  knew  that  she  disapproved  of  all  mili- 
tarism; he  had  not  forgotten  the  unflinching  disap- 
proval that  she  had  shown  him  upon  his  departure; 
but  he  had  satisfied  himself  that  her  disapproval  was 
largely  a  cloak  to  hide  her  grief  at  his  personal  dan- 
ger, and  when,  on  his  return,  he  had  everywhere  else 
been  greeted  as  a  hero,  he  came  to  expect  that  Madge 
would  be  glad  enough  to  see  him  to  accept  the  general 
attitude.  Now  the  reaction  was  severe. 

"  You  seem  to  forget,"  he  said  stiffly,  "  that  I 
might  very  well  have  been  murdered,  as  you  call  it, 
myself." 

She  smiled  a  little. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      261 

"  I  read,"  she  answered,  "  that  most  of  their  car- 
tridges were  filled  with  sawdust;  and  then,  besides, 
you  didn't  have  to  go,  you  know:  you  volunteered." 

He  could  only  look  at  her  reproachfully. 

"  Madge!"  he  said. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  she  returned,  her  eyes  softening; 
"  but  that's  the  way  I  have  been  brought  up  to  feel. 
Better  insurrection  than  war.  Won't  you  come 
in?" 

"  I  want  to  see  you." 

"  Well,  I  shall  be  there." 

"  But  so  will  other  people,  most  likely." 

"  Most  certainly.  I  have  an  engagement  to  dine 
with  three  friends." 

"  But  I  want  to  see  you  alone !  " 
'  Then   come   in   and  walk  home  with  me  after- 
wards." 

"  Madge,"  he  protested,  "  you  can't  ask  me  to  do 
this.  You  can't.  Think.  We  haven't  seen  each 
other  since " 

She  opened  the  door. 

"  Come  in,"  she  said. 

§  4.  The  three  friends  with  whom  Madge  dined 
were  all  women  and,  what  was  worse,  all  of  her 
opinion  regarding  the  war.  Harold  had  rarely  passed 
a  more  unpleasant  two  hours.  •  Nobody  seemed 
greatly  to  notice  his  uniform;  nobody  asked  him  about 
the  campaign;  nobody  paid  much  attention  to  him 
at  all.  It  even  struck  Harold  that,  by  their  avoid- 
ance of  th.e  subject  nearest  his  heart,  they  felt  them- 
selves commendable:  that  they  refrained  from  speech 
about  his  recent  career  because  they  considered  that 


262       THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

it  would  be  unkind  to  mention  something  of  which 
they  believed  he  should  be  ashamed.  By  the  time 
that  Madge  tardily  rose  to  leave,  he  was  in  a  state 
of  fury. 

"  Well,"  he  growled,  when  he  and  Madge  were 
again  alone  upon  the  street,  "  what  does  all  this 
mean?  " 

She  did  not  pretend  to  misunderstand.  Her  voice 
was  very  gentle. 

"  You  ought  to  know,"  she  said. 

"I  know  this,"  he  retorted:  "I  know  that  you 
are  heartless." 

"  Not  that.  Oh,  please !  "  She  raised  her  hand. 
"  Please  not  that.  I  am  sorry  for  you.  You  have 
been  ill,  and  I  am  so  sorry  for  that,  and  so  glad 
that  you  are  getting  well  again." 

He  was  not  to  be  so  easily  mollified.  He  at  once 
felt  physically  worse. 

"  I  am  not  yet  well,  by  any  manner  of  means," 
said  he.  "  You  have  only  to  look  at  me  to  see  that.  I 
don't  believe  I  ever  shall  be  quite  well  again." 

She  believed  him. 

"Oh!"  she  said. 

"  Never,"  he  repeated. 

"  And  they  did  that  to  you?  " 

"Who?" 

'  The  men  that  wanted  this  war.  How  awful  it 
all  is !  " 

"  It  was  my  country  that  wanted  this  war,"  said 
Harold,  stoutly. 

'Yes,"  she  answered,  "your  country:  the  people 
that  make  money  out  of  it  and  out  of  you  who  feel 
that  you  ought  to  do  what  they  want  because  you 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      263 

happened  to  be  born  between  the  same  oceans  and 
the  same  imaginary  lines  that  they  were  born  be- 
tween. I  am  so  sorry,"  she  went  on;  "so  very 
sorry." 

"  I  wasn't  fighting  for  any  individual,"  Harold 
declared. 

"I  know  that,"  said  Madge;  "I  know  that  no 
person  is  to  blame.  But  that  doesn't  influence  me 
to  acquit  the  system." 

"  You  don't  understand.  Women  don't  under- 
stand these  things." 

"  I  understand  what  these  things  have  done  to 
you,  and  so  I  can  imagine  what  they  have  done  to 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  others  here  and  in  Cuba 
and  in  Spain." 

The  fact  that  she  was  sorry  for  him  was  beginning 
to  have  its  effect.  Nevertheless,  he  for  a  while  clung 
to  his  grievance. 

"  Don't  you  count  Cuba's  freedom?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  think,"  she  replied,  u  that,  inside  of  twenty- 
five  years,  you  will  find  Cuba  has  done  no  more  than 
change  masters." 

"  Well,  she'll  have  a  republican  master." 

"  Will  that  much  help  her,  Harold?  " 

"  Help  her?  Of  course  it  will  help  her.  And 
then,  just  think  of  how  it  will  help  us !  " 

"  I  am  thinking  of  how  it  will  help — the  system 
that  exploits  us." 

"  What?  Why,  Madge,  this  war  has  made  us  a 
world-power!  " 

"  It  has  made  the  American  portion  of  the  big 
wrong  system  a  world-power,"  she  argued.  "  We 
have  always  been  a  world-power — we  workers.  I  am 


264      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

wondering  what  will  happen  when  we  workers  all 
realize  that." 

He  gave  it  up. 

"  Madge,"  he  said,  "  you  think  you're  right  and  I 
think  I  am.  But  need  that  keep  us  from  being 
friends?" 

"  Scarcely."  She  met  him  there  with  her  frank 
'eyes.  ;' We  are  friends,  Harold,  aren't  we?  " 

He  was  still  weak  from  the  fever:  a  sob  shook 
him. 

"  And  no  more?  "  he  asked. 

Madge  quivered. 

"Don't,  don't!  "  she  whispered.  "  Not  now.  It 
isn't  fair  of  you.  Have  you  forgotten  all  we  agreed 
on?  Have  you  forgotten  that?  " 

He  felt  the  justice  of  her  position. 

"  You're  right  there,  anyhow,"  he  generously 
granted.  "  I  said  I'd  be  decent  about — about  things, 
and  here  I  am  being  selfish  again.  Please  don't 
think  me  a  cad,  will  you?" 

"  I  think,"  she  said,  "  that  you  are  a  dear  boy 
and  a  good  friend." 

"  I  know  you  are  a  good  friend,"  declared  Harold. 

Her  face  cleared. 

"  And  a  worthy  enemy,"  she  smiled. 

"  Well,"  said  Harold,  "  as  to  that  we'll  see.  Suf- 
ficient unto  the  day  are  the  reconciliations  thereof." 

§  5.  Some  time  after  this,  one  evening  late  in  the 
summer,  Dan  made  a  confession  to  Lysander  Fry 
and  begged  that  experienced  man's  advice. 

Fry  had  called  at  the  broker's  office  close  upon 
closing-time.  He  entered  with  his  usual  breezy  de- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      265 

cisiveness  and  in  a  costume  that  was  to  summer  fash- 
ions what  his  paddock  overcoat  had  once  been  to  those 
of  winter.  He  asked  Dan  to  dinner,  and  would  not 
listen  to  the  abashed  refusal  that  came  so  readily  to 
the  sufferer's  lips. 

"  No  use,"  said  Fry,  as  they  walked  toward  the 
elevated  railway  station.  "  You  look  as  if  you  needed 
cheering  up.  What's  the  matter  with  you,  anyway?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  Dan  listlessly  replied. 

"  Well,  we'll  just  have  a  little  feed  together  and 
talk  over  old  times." 

Dan  forced  himself  to  ask  whether  his  companion 
had  revisited  Americus  lately. 

"  Not  me,"  said  Fry.  "  Americus  is  too  thin  for 
my  blood  these  days.  You're  the  only  person  from 
that  hole  I've  run  across  since  I  don't  know  when." 

Dan  felt  the  necessity  of  making  talk. 

"  I  saw  one  last  winter,"  he  said. 

"That  so?    Who?" 

"  Judith  Kent." 

Fry  looked  at  him  in  surprise. 

"Judith  Kent?"  he  repeated. 

"  Yes;  you  remember  her?  " 

"  I  do  that.  Her  people  put  on  a  lot  of  airs,  but 
she  didn't.  I  always  liked  her.  She  was  decent  to 
me ;  but  I  hadn't  heard  a  word  about  her  for  years. 
What's  become  of  her?  " 

"  She  was  here  in  New  York,  working  on  a 
paper." 

"  A  reporter?" 

"  Yes." 

"What  paper  ?" 

"  I  forget.    I  haven't  seen  her  since." 


266      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Um,"  said  Fry,  pulling  reflectively  at  the  lobe 
of  one  ear.     "  That's  funny." 

"What  is?"  asked  Dan. 

"  That  you  didn't  see  her  again.     I  thought  you 
used  to  be  stuck  on  her." 

Dan  flushed.    Memories  assailed  him. 

"  I  was,"  he  said. 

•  "  You  are  now,"  Fry  accused,  his  piscatory  eyes 
fixing  Dan's  tired  face.  "  Oh,  well,"  he  continued, 
slipping  his  arm  through  his  companion's  and  unheed- 
ing that  companion's  denial;  "  it'll  all  come  out  in  the 
wash.  You  tell  me  what's  bothering  you  now,  my 


son." 


And  there,  in  the  street  glowing  a  dusty  red  under 
the  rays  of  the  sunset,  Dan,  worn  out  by  his  illness, 
in  ten  words  made  his  physical  condition  plain. 

"  Why  didn't  you  tell  me  about  this  at  its  start?  " 
asked  Fry.  "  It  don't  pay  to  let  these  things  run  so 
long." 

"  I  don't  know  why  I  didn't  tell  you,"  said  Dan, 
as  he  looked  at  the  monument  of  vigor  beside  him, 
"  I've  only  seen  you  twice  since." 

Fry  demanded  details,  and  was  given  them. 

"  Oh,  well,"  he  at  last  cheerfully  remarked.  "  I 
guess  we  can  fix  it.  Don't  worry,  anyhow.  A  fellow 
don't  become  a  man  till  he's  been  through  that  sort  of 
thing,  you  know.  I'll  put  you  next  to  a  real  doctor, 
a  friend  of  mine." 

This  was  the  manner  of  Dan's  introduction  to 
Cuthbert  Twigg. 

§  6.  Dr.  J.  Cuthbert  Twigg  was  a  man  of  per- 
haps thirty  years,  with  a  narrow,  pale  face,  consid- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      267 

erably  spotted,  and  pink  eyelids  that  continually 
blinked  over  weak,  neutral-tinted  eyes.  What  Dan 
first  noticed  about  the  physician  was  that  his  very 
white  hands,  though  bony,  gave  an  impression  of  deft- 
ness combined  with  cruelty.  What  Dan  did  not  know 
and  did  not  learn  until  long  afterward  was  that  Twigg 
had  fallen  in  love  with  and,  after  marrying  her,  had 
remained  in  love  with  a  large,  handsome  woman,  who 
had  accepted  him  because  she  believed  in  the  decep- 
tion of  his  prosperous  appearance  and  who  now  de- 
spised him  for  his  poverty,  neglected  him  for  her 
overt  affairs  with  other  men,  and  kept  him  perpetu- 
ally in  debt  by  long  accounts  at  the  department-stores, 
Not  five  years  out  of  the  medical  school,  Twigg,  a 
slave  to  his  devotion,  had  already  taken  to  drink,  and 
had  committed,  for  financial  reasons,  indiscretions 
that  brought  upon  him  the  censures  of  the  city  med- 
ical organization. 

Nevertheless,  he  appeared  to  be  competent  to  treat 
the  case  now  before  him.  He  asked,  jocularly,  a  few 
serious  questions;  made  the  requisite  examination; 
condemned  the  methods  previously  employed,  and 
began  a  new  scheme  of  treatment. 

Within  a  week,  Dan  felt  and  was  better. 

§  7.  One  hot  Saturday  afternoon,  as  Dan  de- 
scended the  steps  from  the  door  of  the  Lexington 
Avenue  boarding-house  in  which  Twigg  had  offices, 
he  met  Judith,  walking  northward.  Her  head  was 
high,  and  her  cheeks  colored  by  the  heat.  She  wore 
a  white  blouse  trimly  belted  at  the  waist,  and  she  car- 
ried several  folded  sheets  of  reporter's  copy-paper  in 
her  hand. 


268      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Instantly  Dan  was  stricken  with  the  confusion  and 
sense  of  guilt  that  had  assailed  him  when  he  passed 
her  with  the  blonde  girl  of  that  night  during  the  pre- 
ceding winter.  He  drew  back,  but  Judith  had  already 
seen  him. 

"  Hello,"  she  said,  in  her  full  contralto,  and 
stopped  so  that  he  was  forced  to  come  forward  and 
take  her  outstretched  hand.  "  I  think  I  am  very 
angry  with  you." 

Dan's  thoughts  circled  about  that  last  encounter. 

"  I  know,"  he  said;  "  I  didn't  mean  you  should 
see  me  that  evening." 

'  That  evening?  "  She  swept  him  with  the  artil- 
lery of  her  brown,  inquiring  eyes.  "  I  was  thinking 
of  the  fact  that  you  hadn't  been  ner.r  me  after  you  had 
promised  to  call."  She  glanced  at  the  professional 
sign  in  the  window  behind  him.  "  You  look  fagged. 
Perhaps  you  haven't  been  well?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Dan,  awkwardly;  "  that's  it:  I  haven't 
been  well." 

"  I  hope  it  is  nothing  serious?  "  There  was  real 
concern  in  her  rich  tones. 

"No,  no;  nothing  serious.     Besides,  I'm  all  right 


now." 


"  Then  you  can  walk  with  me  as  far  as  the  Grand 
Central,"  she  said  masterfully.  "  I  know  your  office 
must  have  closed  at'noon." 

She  set  out  again,  and  Dan,  his  heart  still  aching 
with  misgivings,  kept  pace  with  her  free  stride.  Pres- 
ently, and  in  a  perfectly  natural  tone,  she  resumed : 

"  So  you  were  ashamed  to  have  me  see  you  that 
evening?  " 

Dan  looked  away. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      269 

"  Yes,  I  was,"  he  said. 

"  Ashamed  of  being  seen,  but  not  ashamed  of  the 
doing,"  said  Judith. 

He  was  still  looking  away.  He  asked  himself 
what  right  this  woman  had  to  set  herself  up  as  his 
moral  judge.  He  asked  himself  how  women  like 
Judith  and  Madge  could  speak  so  plainly  of  topics 
generally  forbidden. 

Women  were  merely  grown-up  babies.  He  re- 
sented inquiry  into  his  more  intimate  life,  which,  he 
believed,  was  his  own  only.  The  privacy  of  the  male 
should  be  sacred. 

"  Don't  you  think,"  he  inquired,  "  that  .this  is 
something  we'd  better  not  talk  about?  " 

"You  are  no  Horace  Traubel,"  she  answered: 
"  you  are  as  averse  to  truth  as  the  average  American 
biographer.  You  do  it:  why  shouldn't  I  talk  of  it?  " 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Dan;  "  only  it's  not  con- 
ventional." 

"  The  one  thing  that  we  can  honestly  say  in  favor 
of  convention  is  that  we  are  used  to  it,"  she  assured 
him. 

Dan  did  not  reply ;  but  Judith's  was  one  of  those 
impatient  minds  that  accept  the  refusal  to  argue  as 
a  confession  of  defeat. 

"  If  you  had  said  that  the  affair  was  none  of  my 
business,"  she  continued,  supplying  an  objection  for 
the  delight  of  demolishing  it,  "  I  might  have  told  you 
that  I  had  a  friendly  interest  in  you." 

"  I  hope  you  have  that,"  said  Dan.  "  And  that's 
why  I  didn^t  want  to  talk  about  all  this."  ^; 

But  she  "could  not  so  regard  it. 

"  I  have  the  interest,"  she  said,  "  and  that's  why 


270      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

I  do  want  to  talk  about  all  this.  You  see,  I  want 
to  be  friendly  with  you  and  not  with  what  you  want 
me  to  think  is  you.  I  know  how  you  feel  about  it. 
It's  so  easy  to  be  occult  and  intense,  and  'so  hard  to 
be  simple  and  sincere."  Her  large  eyes  met  him. 
"  But  don't  think  that  I  don't  understand  your  life," 
she  concluded. 

Dan  felt  a  strange  beating  of  his  heart. 

u  And  you  like  me,  anyhow?  " 

"  I  like  you,  anyhow,"  she  smiled.  "  I'm  not  on 
your  side,  of  course.  My  work  makes  me  see  too 
much  of  the  other.  The  man  like  you  has  an  easy 
time  of  it  among  respectable  people.  All  he  need  do 
is  to  be  *  liberal ' — and  that  only  means  financially 
liberal — to  his  victim;  then  the  wronged  woman 
ceases  to  be  wronged,  but  remains  wrong." 

"  Oh,"  said  Dan,  with  his  half  shrug,  "  don't  talk 
about  'victims'!  " 

"  I  sha'n't  talk  even  about  morals,"  she  agreed, 
her  o\vn  eyes  now  lowered;  "  but  I  know  well  enough 
why  you  didn't  come  to  see  me,  and  I  want  you  to 
come  to  see  me ;  so  I  do  want  you  to  understand  how 
I  feel  about  these  things.  Well,  I'm  worried  about 
you  only  because  I  know  that  if  you  fling  open  your 
doors  too  wide  to  love,  it  will  start  a  run  on  your 
bank  and  ruin  your  resources  of  emotion." 

Dan  sought  to  end  the  one-sided  controversy. 

"  I'm  just  like  other  fellows,"  said  he. 

"I  dare  say  you  are,"  she  reflectively  answered; 
"  and  you  think  it's  a  sin  to  be  like  others.  Shall  I 
tell  you  why  you  think  it's  a  sin?  It's  because  you 
enjoy  it.  You  don't  go  deeper  than  that,  and  that's 
the  effect  of  your  education,  of  your  life  here:  when- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      271 

ever  a  thing  is  pleasant  it  must  somehow  be  wrong." 

"What?"  asked  Dan.  He  was  dumfounded 
now.  "  You're  not  trying  to  tell  me  that  you  don't 
think  it's  wrong?  " 

"  I  am  not  trying  to  tell  you  my  opinion,"  said 
Judith.  She  put  up  a  gracile  hand  and  pushed  awjiy 
a  strand  of  chestnut  hair  that  had  fallen  over  her 
hot  face.  "I  don't  mind  good  men:  there  is  only 
one  sort. of  virtue  that  is  unpleasant  and  that  is  what- 
ever virtue  has  not  known  temptation.  The  thing 
that  has  hurt  you  is  the  way  you  were  brought 
up." 

"  I  was  as  well  brought  up  as  any  other  child  in 
Americus!  "  flashed  Dan. 

"  Meaning  me?  "  she  asked.  ;'  I  agree  with  you; 
but  then  we  were  all  brought  up  wrong.  If  ever  I 
have  a  child,  he  will  be  told  all  that  I  know  about 
the  world  long  before  he  goes  out  into  it." 

"  That's  horrible!" 

"  Why?  "  asked  Judith.     "  Were  you  told?  " 

u  I  certainly  was  not." 

"  And  do  you  thirk  you  would  be  where  you  are 
now  if  you  had  been  told?  " 

She  was  speaking,  of  course,  only  of  what  she 
had  seen  and  of  what  he  had  hinted;  but  her  words 
turned  Dan's  mind  to  the  house  that  he  had  just  left. 
He  writhed. 

"I  don't  care,"  he  said,  stubbornly;  "if  parents 
do  that  s'ort  of  thing,  some  of  their  sons  will  go 
wrong  and  some  of  their  daughters." 

"  Nowadays,"  Judith  replied,  "  with  the  veil  kept 
in  its  place,  some  of  our  daughters  '  go  wrong ' — 
and  all  of  our  sons." 


272      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

It  was  a  dangerous  topic  to  pursue  with  him.  His 
health  was  all  but  restored;  his  once  indulged  body 
was  crying  against  continued  abstinence.  He  looked 
at  the  splendid  figure  beside  him,  his  warm  glance 
traveling  from  her  knees  to  her  face.  He  forgot  their 
past  romance  and  their  present  friendship. 

"Judith "  he  began. 

But  then  his  eyes  encountered  hers. 

"  Not  that,"  she  said.  Her  voice  was  low  and 
kindly,  but  it  was  also  steady:  she  understood. 

u  I  didn't  mean "  he  stammered. 

They  had  turned  into  Forty-second  Street.  She 
put  a  hand  upon  his  trembling  arm.  *  You  don't 
want  to  spoil  things,  do  you,  Dan?  " 

"  Oh,"  he  broke  out  petulantly,  "  it's  your  own 
fault !  You  understand  all  about  such  matters.  You 
— you  even  talk  about  them,  and  yet — — " 

"Well?"  asked  Judith. 

"Confound  it!  Can't  you  see?  Only  bad 
women  know  about  them — bad  women  and  married 


ones." 


'  You  class  the  bad  and  the  married  together," 
she  said.  She  was  smiling  now,  and  yet  her  breath 
came  and  went  quickly.  "  And  you  throw  me  in  for 
good  measure !  " 

"  I  didn't  mean  that,  only "  He  hesitated, 

his  wide  eyes  softened.  "  I  do  like  you,  Judith." 

"  Then,"  she  said,  "  you  mustn't  try  to  make  me 
stop  liking  you.  Here's  the  station,  and  I  must  run. 
I  have  an  assignment  at  Stamford.  You  will  come 
to  see  me  soon,  won't  you?  " 

He  promised,  and,  as  he  watched  her  tall,  well- 
proportioned  figure  pass  into  the  station,  he  reflected 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      273 

that  she  had  confessed  to  liking  him.  The  merely 
physical  passion  of  a  moment  ended.  He  thought 
that  she  might  some  day  come  to  like  him  better. 

§  8.  But  he  did  not  keep  his  promise.  September 
approached;  the  after-math  of  the  war  held  him 
busy  at  the  office  and  left  his  body,  already  worn, 
too  tired  at  the  day's  end  to  permit  of  anything  but 
a  hurried  supper  and  an  early  bed.  Then,  at  last, 
Twigg  pronounced  him  well,  and,  in  the  elation  that 
followed  this  announcement,  there  rose  clamoring  the 
demand  that  had  been  so  long  subdued.  He  went 
seeking  again  for  his  Dame  aux  Cornelias. 

He  found  her.  One  humid  evening  as  he  passed 
the  entrance  of  a  restaurant,  he  saw  a  woman  in  a 
long  lace  wrap  standing  by  the  curb  and  speaking  to 
the  driver  of  a  hansom,  who  was  bending  from  his 
box  and  replying  in  a  loud  and  angry  voice. 

"  I  don't  know  anything  about  that,"  said  the 
driver,  "  I  drove  you  here,  and  I  want  my  fare." 

"  But  I  tell  you,"  said  the  woman,  "  that  I  dropped 
my  purse." 

The  light  from  the  restaurant  doorway  fell  upon 
her  face.  Dan  saw  that  she  was  slim  and  lithe, 
that  the  harr  beneath  her  hat  was  corn-colored,  and 
that  her  eyes,  the  shade,  of  his  own,  were  round  and 
cloudy  and  distant. 

"  Purse  I  "  shouted  the  driver.  "  I  don't  believe 
you  had  no  purse!  " 

"I  did!     I " 

The  remainder  of  the  sentence  was  lost. 

A  crowd  was  gathering,  such  a  crowd  as  a  street- 
dispute  always  magically  summons  on  an  evening  in 


274      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

New  York.  There  was  a  seller  of  newspapers  who 
gaped;  one  or  two  elderly  men  smiling  cynically;  and 
a  young  wife  on  the  arm  of  her  husband,  holding 
her  husband  back  so  that  she  might  see  and  hear  and 
envy  and  scorn.  The  liveried  doorkeeper  of  the 
restaurant  began  to  shoulder  his  way  toward  the  dis- 
putants. 

Dan  found  himself  pushed  close  to  the  woman. 
He  saw  that  there  were  tears  in  her  eyes.  Then 
he  remembered  that  he  had  with  him  his  salary, 
paid  that  day,  most  of  which  he  had  intended  to 
deposit  in  the  bank  next  morning  against  the  interest 
on  the  Van  Voorne  loan.  He  heard  himself  address- 
ing the  driver: 

"  How  much  does  this  lady  owe  you?  " 

His  voice  surprised  him;  it  sounded,  in  his  ears, 
the  note  of  power. 

"  One-fifty/'  said  the  driver. 

Dan  produced  a  two-dollar 'bill.  He  was  about 
to  wait  for  change,  but  he  heard  somebody  in  the 
crowd  chuckle. 

"  Keep  the  change,"  he  said. 

The  woman  turned  upon  him  a  face  grown  radiant. 

"  Oh !  "  she  whispered.     "  You're  good !  " 

Somehow  her  hand  slipped  through  his  arm. 

"  Come  out  of  this,"  said  Dan,  and  led  her  into 
the  restaurant. 

"  I  just  got  back  from  Atlantic  City  to-day,"  she 
was  saying,  as  she  found  a  corner  table  with  which 
she  appeared  to  be  familiar.  "  I  hate  the  city  in  the 
summer,  but  I  had  a  fight  with  my  friend,  so  I  had 
to  come  back.  I  was  coming  here  to  eat  all  alone. 
I  had  my  purse  in  my  hand  and  my  arm  over  the 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      275 

front  of  the  hansom.  Just  as  we  turned  into  Broad- 
way, the  hansom  jolted  and  the  purse  fell  out.  I 
told  the  driver  to  stop  then,  but  he  wouldn't.""  " 

She  called  the  waiter  by  name.  She  said  that  she 
was  not  hungry,  but  she  ordered  a  dinner  that 
startled  Dan. 

However,  she  was  wonderful  to  look  at.  He  did 
not  think  her  regular  features  hard.  He  could  not 
keep  his  eyes  from  the  vividly  red  lips  that  gave 
glimpses  of  little  white  teeth  behind  them,  from  the 
melting  eyes  and  the  corn-colored  hair.  He  knew 
just  enough  of  women's  clothes  to  be  sure  that  her 
dress  was  expensive;  and  he  thought  that  any  one 
of  her  several  rings  must  have  cost  more  than  he 
could  pay  with  three  months'  pay.  He  was  aware 
that  other  diners  in  the  restaurant  were  admiring  her 
too,  and  admiring  him  for  the  company  that  he  was 
able  to  keep.  He  could  not  keep  more  dazzling 
company  if  he  were  one  of  the  "  successful  "  men 
that  he  had  been  taught  to  reverence.  It  behooved 
him,  he  felt,  to  play  the  role  of  a  successful  man. 

She  talked  a  great  deal,  in  a  resonant  soprano 
and  with  an  accent  that,  Dan  gathered  from  the 
examples  of  it  which  he  had  heard  on  the  stage, 
must  be  fashionable.  Her  name,  she  said,  was  Mrs. 
Morton,  but  he  must  call  her  Cora.  She  was  not 
married.  Her  husband  had  been  a  rich  cattle-man 
from  Kansas  City,  but  she  had  divorced  him  in  Reno 
because  of  his  affection  for  other  women.  Left  alone 
in  New  York,  she  had  been  compelled  to  fend  for 
herself.  Luckily  she  had  several  friends. 

Dan  gathered  that  these  friends  were  all  wealthy 
and  all  men.  By  degrees  it  was  made  quite  plain 


276      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

to  him  that  one  of  them  had  been  regularly  sup- 
porting her,  that  she  had  been  his  mistress.  It 
was  with  this  man  that  she  had  quarreled  in  Atlantic 
City.  He  would  come  back ;  Dan  found  her  serenely 
assured  of  that;  but  she  saved  nothing,  and  there 
would  be,  in  the  meantime,  a  lean  interval. 

With  the  air  of  one  accustomed  to  such  dinners 
as  this,  she  called  at  last  for  the  bill,  and  nodded 
to  the  waiter  to  deliver  it  to  Dan.  When  Dan,  hav- 
ing nonchalantly  refrained  from  verifying  its  addi- 
tion, paid  it  without  showing  how  greatly  it  appalled 
him,  and  was  leaving  twenty-five  cents  for  a  tip  be- 
side his  plate,  she  reached  across  the  table,  and,  from 
his  change  nimbly  separated  four  more  quarters  from 
the  money,  and  placed  these  with  the  sum  intended 
for  the  waiter. 

"  Now,"  she  said,  "  come  around  to  my  flat  and 
talk  to  me  a  little." 

Dan  was  torn  between  desire  and  the  impulse  for 
economy. 

"  Thank  you,"  he  said,  "  I'd  like  to,  but " 

"  We  can  walk,"  she  interrupted.  "  It  isn't  far, 
and  a  walk  will  do  me  good.  We  needn't  waste 
money  on  a  cab.  Don't  you  want  to  ?  " 

Her  elbows  were  on  the  table,  and  her  hands 
clasped  beneath  her  chin.  Her  eyes  were  wide,  but 
heavy. 

Dan  breathed  deeply. 

"  I  want  to  more  than  anything  else  in  the  world," 
he  said.  His  voice  was  thick. 

'*  Then  don't  worry.  I  understand  some  things. 
I've  been  your  guest.  Now  you'll  be  mine." 

They  rose. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      277 

"  Give  me  a  quarter  for  the  cloak-boy,"  she  whis- 
pered. 

On  the  walk  to  her  apartments  they  were  accosted 
by  a  lad  selling  violets.  He  was  such  a  pretty  lad 
that  Cora  had  Dan  buy  her  a  large  bunch  of  the 
flowers.  They  cost  two  dollars. 

Dan  spent  the  night  at  her  rooms. 


XVII 


T 


IHE  next  morning  there  was  awaiting  him  at 
the  office  a  note  from  Dr.  Twigg: 


"DEAR  MR.  BARNES: — I  did  not  mean  to  send 
you  my  bill  till  the  first  of  the  month,  but  I  have 
some  heavy  bills  of  my  own  to  meet,  and  I  will  be 
glad  if  you  can  give  me  a  prompt  settlement. 
"  Yours  truly, 

"  J.  CUTHBERT  TWIGG." 

The  bill  was  inclosed.  It  was  for  one  hundred 
and  seventy-five  dollars.  Dan  let  the  paper  fall  to 
the  floor.  His  lips  were  pale. 

"  What's  wrong,  Barnes?  "  asked  one  of  the  clerks. 
4  Your  girl  gone  back  on  you,  or  your  tailor  going 
to  sue?  " 

"  I  haven't  any  girl  and  I  haven't  any  tailor,"  said 
Dan. 

A  hundred  and  seventy-five  dollars  !  The  creditor 
might  as  well  have  asked  for  a  thousand.  Dan 
could  no  more  raise  the  former  sum  than  the  latter. 
Twigg  was  crazy :  he  must  be.  The  charge  was  out- 
rageous. Dan  swore  that  he  would  that  evening 
call  on  the  doctor  and  refuse  to  be  gouged. 

Nevertheless,  by  evening  his  resolution  weakened. 
He  did  not  want  a  personal  interview.  He  decided 
to  telephone,  but  he  hesitated  even  about  that;  and, 
while  he  was  hesitating,  Cora  called  him  up  and  asked 

278 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      279 

him  to  take  her  somewhere  for  a  very  light  dinner. 
He  decided  to  refuse  Twigg  by  mail. 

This  at  least  he  did  without  delay.  He  wrote  his 
full  and  fervent  opinion  of  the  bill. 

"I  won't  pay  that  amount,"  he  concluded.  "I 
wouldn't  pay  it  if  I  could,  and  I  can't.  You  will 
have  to  make  your  charge  reasonable,  or  you  won't 
get  a  cent  from  me." 

To  this  Twigg's  response,  received  the  next  after- 
noon, was  brief.  He  said  that  his  bill  was  really 
moderate  and  must  be  paid.  He  would  extend  the 
time  to  a  fortnight,  but,  if  the  money  was  not  then 
promptly  handed  over,  he  would  call  on  Dan's  em- 
ployers and  tell  them  that  the  money  was  owing  and 
why. 

Dan  was  in  despair.  He  tried  to  find  Fry,  in  the 
hope  of  persuading  him  to  pacify  this  creditor;  but 
Fry  was  out  of  the  city  and  would  not  return  for 
three  weeks.  He  called  Twigg  by  telephone,  but 
Twigg's  wife  was  threatening  to  leave  him  if  he  did 
not  give  her  more  money.  The  doctor  was  obdurate ; 
and  all  the  while,  from  the  brief  future,  there  was 
advancing  the  day  of  reckoning  with  Van  Voorne. 

Dan  sought  forgetfulness  in  a  wild  pursuit  of 
Cora.  In  her  company  he  would  seem  to  be  the 
successful  man  that  he  wanted  to  become.  She  was 
a  part  of  Jthe  wonder  of  New  York,  the  charm  of  its 
vitality  and  power,  the  intimate  of  its  captains  of 
industry  of  whom  Dan  was  resolved  some  day  to  be 
one.  She  personified  the  marvel  and  mystery  of  the 
city;  its  large  and  swift  living,  brilliantly  revealing 
much,  temptingly  concealing  more.  Why  shut  his 


280      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

eyes  to  her  beauty?  Love  can  enter  by  any  of  a 
hundred  doors.  His  entire  training  and  his  whole 
economic  condition  had  perfectly  fitted  him  to  lose 
his  head  about  this  woman,  and  he  lost  it. 

For  her  part,  Cora  appeared  quietly  satisfied. 
She  said  no  more  of  the  man  that  had  been  her 
keeper;  no  more  of  her  other  friends.  She  received 
him  on  many  an  evening.  Our  passions  are  stronger 
than  our  sense  of  humor;  if  they  were  not,  few  pas- 
sions would  endure.  Consequently,  the  evenings  that 
she  refused  him  did  no  more  than  whet  Dan's  appe- 
tite; the  evenings  when  she  let  him  take  her  to  some 
public  place  brought  him  no  moment  that  suggested 
the  incongruity  of  his  appearance  in  her  company. 
She  would  sit  in  a  restaurant  looking,  as  all  beautiful 
women  do  and  only  beautiful  women  can,  in  every 
direction  at  the  same  time;  and  yet  she  would  see 
to  it  that  Dan  saw  her  looking  only  at  him.  She 
permitted  him  to  gather  up  the  crumbs  fallen  from 
that  white  table  of  her  charms  which,  though  he  never 
guessed  it,  was  still  spread  for  others. 

Dan  borrowed  from  his  fellow  clerks.  He  ac- 
quired credit  at  a  florist's.  He  pawned  his  watch,  his 
cuff-buttons,  and  his  scarf-pins.  He  established  an 
account  at  the  restaurant  that  Cora  preferred.  She 
never  directly  asked  him  to  give  her  money;  it  was 
understood  that  she  liked  him  too  well  for  that;  but 
she  frequently  asked  him  to  lend  her  ten  or  twenty 
dollars,  and  thus  she  frequently  received  five  or  ten 
dollar  bills.  Had  he  not  found  his  Dame  aux 
Camelias? 

§  2.     One  night,  just  as  Dan's  days  of  financial 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      281 

respite  approached  an  end,  he  passed  Harold  Rich- 
ardson, already  completely  recovered  from  the  fever, 
and  entering  the  fattening  stage  of  reaction.  Cora 
on  his  arm,  Dan  drew  himself  up  mightily  and  bowed 
with  a  grand  air.  The  next  evening  happening  to 
be  one  of  those  which  Dan  had  to  himself,  Harold 
found  him,  and  they  dined  together  at  that  restaurant 
where  Dan  could  sign  the  checks. 

"Who's  your  friend?"  asked  Harold.  His 
cheeks  were  round  and  pink  again  and  his  eyes  bright 
now  that  he  had  re-established  amicable  relations  with 
Madge. 

'What  friend?"  Dan  inquired  with  tremendous 
innocence. 

"  The  one  I  saw  you  with  last  night;  the  one  that 
smiled  at  me." 

Dan  stiffened. 

"  She  didn't  smile  at  you"  he  corrected. 

"All  right,"  conceded  Harold.  "I  think  that 
constant  laughter  is  no  sure  sign  of  a  happy  nature; 
more  often  than  not  it  is  only  a  sign  of  good 
teeth.  Have  it  your  own  way,  though.  Who  is 
she?" 

"  Her  name,"  said  Dan,  "  is  Morton:  Mrs.  Mor- 
ton." He  emphasized  the  marital  title. 

Harold  whistled. 

"  Have  you  heard  of  her?  "  asked  Dan. 

"  I've  heard  cf  a  man  that  heard  of  her  ten  years 
ago,"  said  Harold,  flippantly.  "She's  a  former 
beauty;  flat  champagne." 

"  Don't  talk  that  way,"  said  Dan,  sharply.  "  She 
is  a  friend  of  mine."  He  remembered  what  Harold 
had  once  said  of  Madge,  and  he  was  the  more  angry 


282      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

because,  for  the  first  time,  he  felt  that  Harold  might 
now  be  speaking  the  truth.. 

But  Harold,  the  regenerated,  had  grown  solemn. 

"  Drop  it,  Dan,"  he  warned.  "  I  know  the  game; 
I  have  played  it,  and  I  know  there  is  nothing  in  it. 
Lust  for  a  woman  leads  to  distrust  of  her;  and  lust 
and  distrust  are  the  history  of  modern  love  in  two 
chapters." 

Dan  gathered  his  legs  tight  under  his  chair.  He 
resented  Harold's  attitude,  but  he  did  not  want  to 
quarrel,  and  there  had  just  occurred  to  him  the  idea 
that  his  companion  might  be  useful  to  him  in  a  plan 
which  had  suggested  itself.  Until  the  salad  was 
served,  he  talked  of  indifferent  matters. 

"  How  are  your  own  affairs  getting  on?  "  he  then 
asked.  "  Are  you  engaged  to  Madge?  " 

"No."  Harold  shook  his  fair  head.  "She 
won't  have  me.  She  thinks  I'm  not  serious  enough. 
I  know  how  it  generally  is:  if  you  want  to  punish 
properly  the  woman  that  offers  to  be  your  sister, 
you  must  make  her  your  sister-in-law;  but  then  you 
see,"  he  added,  "  Madge  is  an  only  child,  and  an 
adopted  one  at  that." 

"  Do  you  think  she  cares  about  you?  " 

"  She  loves  me.     I  know  it:  she  is  rude  to  me." 

"  I  don't  believe,"  said  Dan,  with  a  burst  of  un- 
exampled frankness,  "  that  she  ever  thinks  about  any- 
body once  he's  out  of  her  sight." 

Harold,  however,  was  thoroughly  enmeshed. 

"True,"  he  hopefully  granted;  "but  then  she  so 
perfectly  remembers  you  when  you  come  in  again. 
No,  no!  She's  wonderful;  she  has  about  her  the 
stimulus  of  fresh  air  and  of  life.  I  shall  try  again. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE       283 

Few  women  fall  at  the  first  attack,  but  few  survive 
the  second." 

"  Why  does  she  turn  you  down?"  asked  Dan, 
teasingly. 

"  Truth  and  the  excuses  of  a  woman  are  stranger 
than  fiction.  In  the  first  place,  as  I've  said,  my  dear 
Daniel,  she  thinks  I'm  not  serious  enough,  and,  in 
the  second,  she  says  that  she  doesn't  greatly  believe 
in  the  institution  of  marriage,  anyhow." 

"  Not  with  anybody?  " 

"  Not  with  the  most  marrying  man  in  the  world. 
Not  even  with  Brigham  Young.  However,  I  think 
I  can  bring  her  around,  once  I  convince  her  I'm 
serious,  and  I'm  really  no  end  serious,  you  know. 
I'm  getting  on  with  my  practice,  and  I'm  going  to 
make  a  big  stab  at  politics.  Then  I'll  put  the  matter 
of  Madge  up  to  the  governor.  Of  course,  the  gov. 
will  raise  Cain  at  first;  but  then  he  really  likes  to 
raise  Cain,  and  after  he  has  calmed  down  he'll  eat 
out  of  my  hand.  Mixed  metaphor,  eh?  " 

Dan  wanted  to  know  if  Harold  had  told  Madge 
about  his  political  ambitions. 

"  No,"  said  Harold.  "  Never  confess  too  much 
to  the  girl  you  love;  she'll  remember  it  after  she  has 
married  you.  I  might  fail.  I  prefer  to  do  some- 
thing first  and  then  go  to  her  and  brag  about  it. 
Now,  there's  a  strong  reform  element  getting  to- 
gether out  in  our  county.  We're  run  by  a  rotten 
gang  of  grafters  and  bar-room  bums,  and  I  believe 
we  can  frame  up  a  real  force  for  honest  government. 
Lawnhurst  has  just  been  taken  into  the  city  limits 
of  the  county-seat,  and  I've  got  myself  nominated 
for  councils  on  the  reform  ticket." 


284      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Who  are  with  you?"  asked  Dan. 

Harold  named  several  business  men  of  his  neigh- 
borhood: men  whose  business  was  in  New  York  and 
who  had,  therefore,  nothing  to  fear  from  suburban 
gangsters. 

"  And  how  about  Van  Voorne?  "  Dan  inquired. 

"Who?" 

"What's  his  real  name?     The  money-lender." 

"Peter  Asche?  I  think  he'll  come  in  all  right. 
By  the  way,  I  paid  the  sucker  my  old  note,  but  lately 
I've  had  to  take  out  another  for  political  purposes. 
How  did  you  get  on  with  him?  " 

It  was  precisely  the  question  for  which  Dan  had 
been  angling. 

"  Not  so  well,"  he  said.  "  I  never  met  him. 
They  wouldn't  send  your  letter  in  to  him,  you  know. 
Now  I'm  carrying  an  extended  loan  there,  and  I 
want  more.  I  wish  you'd  take  me  round  to-morrow 
and  introduce  me  to  Asche,  will  you?  " 

Harold  was  willing.  It  appeared  that  he,  too, 
had  business  with  the  money-lender.  The  political 
gang  that  controlled  the  councils  of  Medford,  which 
was  the  county-town  that  had  just  reached  out  to 
include  Lawnhurst,  were  inclined  to  sell  for  a  song 
a  street-railway  franchise  to  a  firm  of  New  York 
promoters,  doubtless  on  the  understanding  that  the 
individual  politicians  were  to  receive  stock  in  the  new 
trolley-company.  To  prevent  this  unjust  squander- 
ing of  a  right  that  belonged  to  the  citizens  as  a 
whole,  certain  public-spirited  men  had  organized  a 
local  reform-party  in  the  endeavor  to  elect  their  can- 
didates to  councils  at  the  approaching  election,  not 
until  after  which  the  franchise  ordinance  was  to  be 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      285 

considered.  Harold  was  named  as  the  reform  candi- 
date from  his  ward.  To  secure  his  nomination  con- 
siderable money  had  been  needed;  more  would  now 
be  required  to  secure  his  election,  and,  as  Mr.  Rich- 
ardson, hard  hit  by  the  war's  effect  upon  the  stock- 
market,  had  shown  a  growing  disinclination  to  make 
further  advances  to  his  son,  the  son  was  negotiating 
another  loan  from  Peter  Asche. 

"  Of  course,  he's  carrying  on  what  is  really  an 
illegal  business,"  said  Harold,  "  but  we've  got  to 
put  up  with  that.  He's  mighty  handy  to  have  around 
the  town,  illegal  or  not,  and  I'll  bet  you  a  ten  spot 
we  can  fix  him." 

Dan  was  sitting,  only  partially  hopeful,  with  his 
shoulders  half  way  down  the  back  of  his  chair,  his 
long  legs  now  sprawling  before  him  under  the  table. 
He  held  a  freshly  lighted  cigar  between  his  teeth. 

*  You  want  to  have  things  so  that  they  can't  bring 
this  up  against  you  in  the  campaign,"  he  said  list- 
lessly. 

"  I'll  fix  it  so  that  they  won't  bring  it  up  either 
then  or  later,"  said  Harold.  "  I  don't  want  to  count 
my  chickens  before  they  are  out  of  cold-storage; 
but  just  you  watch  your  uncle!  What  says  Mr. 
Gibbon?  *  It  is  the  first  care  of  the  reformer  to 
prevent  any  future  reformation.'  I'm  in  this  thing 
to  win.  I  know  that  gang's  methods  are  crooked, 
and,  besides,  I  have  a  few  personal  grudges  against 
some  of  the  gangsters.  Zeal  for  a  cause  often  comes 
after  hatred  of  its  enemies." 

§  3.  It  took  far  longer  to  find  Peter  Asche  than 
it  did  to  secure  a  favor  from  him  when  found.  A 


286      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

vast  amount  of  telephoning  was  necessary  to  com- 
municate with  him  next  day  at  the  lunch-hour,  and 
then  the  pleasant  gum-chewer  at  the  counter-window 
of  Van  Voorne  &  Co.  showed  a  disposition  to  die  at 
her  post  rather  than  open  the  gate  that  was  concealed 
in  the  counter  beside  her.  However,  these  difficul- 
ties were  at  last  overcome,  and  the  two  young  men 
were  shown  into  the  offices  of  the  money-lender. 

Asche  was  fat  and  florid.  Somewhere  in  those 
days  of  his  early  career  from  which  he  never  drew 
the  curtain  of  reserve,  his  nose  had  been  broken  and 
improperly  set.  Consequently,  it  now  began  where 
most  noses  begin,  but,  halfway  through  its  course, 
it  hesitated,  wavered,  thickened,  and  then  shot  off 
toward  the  right-hand  corner  of  his  mouth.  His  lips 
were  broad;  there  were  heavy  bags  under  his  eyes, 
and  his  oiled  hair  was  scanty. 

Notwithstanding  his  sinister  appearance,  he  was 
extremely  affable.  Harold's  request  he  granted  with 
scarcely  a  word  of  question;  and  Dan,  as  soon  as 
Harold  had  announced  himself  as  sponsor,  was  per- 
mitted a  renewal  of  his  old  notes  and  allowed  to  make 
the  further  negotiations  that  gave  him  the  hundred 
and  seventy-five  dollars  required  for  Twigg,  payment 
for  the  whole  to  be  made  on  the  first  of  November. 

It  was  all  so  easy  that  Dan  parted  first  from  Asche 
and  then  from  Harold  with  a  regret  that  he  had 
not  asked  for  more.  "  Mr.  Henry  Brown  "  had 
been  scarcely  mentioned.  Asche,  once  personally 
known,  was  clearly  not  the  man  to  press  pay- 
ment. A  decent  economy  would  take  care  of  the 
interest;  frequent  renewals  were  obviously  possible; 
Christmas,  though  distant,  would  bring  Dan  a  present 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      287 

from  home,  and  meantime  there  was  soon  sure  to  be 
another  raise  of  salary  and  a  chance  for  a  redeeming 
plunge  in  margins  that  would  end  by  wiping  out  the 
entire  debt. 

There  was  not  time  to  go  to  Twigg's.  Dan  must 
return  to  work.  He  would  stop  at  the  physician's 
office  on  his  way  down  town  next  day. 

§  4.  At  O'Neill  &  Silverstone's  a  letter  awaited 
him.  It  was  from  Mrs.  Barnes,  written  in  her  thin, 
nervous  hand,  and  it  brought  the  news  that  Old  Tom 
was  ill. 

"  I  think  he  has  been  working  too  hard,"  wrote 
Dan's  mother,  "  and  he  hasn't  been  eating  well  this 
long  time,  looking  kind  of  worn  down.  Even  after 
suppers  he  has  been  going  back  to  the  store  nights. 
Last  week  he  caught  a  cold.  It  was  hot  weather, 
but  he  must  have  sat  in  a  draught,  or  else  the  night 
air  coming  home  from  the  store  late.  He  wouldn't 
go  to  bed  or  have  in  that  young  doctor  that  has  Dr. 
Ireland's  practice,  and  now  he  is  laid  up  in  bed  be- 
cause he  is  too  weak  to  get  out  of  it,  and  I  am  afraid 
he's  very  sick.  I  had  the  doctor  anyhow.  He  says 
maybe  pneumonia.  I  asked  if  I  ought  to  write  to 
you,  and  the  doctor  said  no  and  your  father  said  no 
too,  but  I  thought  I  would  do  it  just  the  same.  I 
am  worried.  I  wish  you  could  come  down  home  for 
a  little  visit,  but  I  know  you  are  very  busy,  and  will 
keep  you  informed  of  any  change,  which  I  hope  and 
pray  will  .-come  soon  and  for  the  better." 

Dan  put  the  letter  into  his  pocket.  He  was  sorry 
and  he  was  frightened.  His  father  had  always 
seemed  so  like  a  rock  in  the  desert:  could  it  be  pos- 
sible that  the  rock  was  to  fall?  His  imagination 


288      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

could  not  compass  that;  but  all  the  rest  of  the  work- 
ing-day he  went  about  depressed.  He  wrote  at  once, 
asking  for  a  later  report  of  Old  Tom's  condition; 
and  he  resolved  that,  if  this  report  announced  no 
improvement,  he  would  go  to  Mr.  Silverstone,  the 
partner  in  charge  of  the  routine  work  of  the  firm, 
tell  him  the  news,  and  ask  for  a  vacation  and  an 
advance  toward  the  expenses  of  the  journey  to 
Americus. 

In  the  hour  of  relief  there  had  come  this  new 
trouble.  Dan,  as  the  car  carried  him  up  Broadway 
that  evening,  felt  that  he  needed  comfort,  and,  dis- 
mounting, turned  toward  the  house  in  which  Cora 
lived.  A  motor-car  stood  at  the  curb. 

He  climbed  the  stairs.  He  was  wrapped  in  his 
own  thoughts  and  so  heard  no  sound  to  forewarn  him 
of  the  sight  that  met  him  when  his  head  came  above 
the  level  of  the  landing  on  which  Mrs.  Morton's 
sitting-room  opened. 

Cora  stood  there,  apparently  saying  good-by  to  a 
gray-haired  man  in  a  motor-coat.  The  man  handed 
her  a  yellow-backed  bill,  and  Cora  put  her  arms  about 
his  seamed  neck  and  kissed  him  gratefully. 

Dan  drew  back  against  the  wall.  That  this  sort 
of  thing  must  happen  for  the  sake  of  rents  and  gowns 
he  had  obscurely  understood;  but  he  had  never 
opened  his  mind  to  the  definite  fact  of  another  man 
treated  with  the  same  show  of  affection  as  was  given 
to  him. 

Cora  raised  her  yellow  head,  and,  over  her  lover's 
shoulder,  saw  Dan. 

"  Good-by,"  she  said  to  the  gray-haired  man. 
"  You  must  come  again  soon,  won't  you?  " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      289 

;<  To-morrow  afternoon?"  asked  the  man. 

"  At  two,"  said  Cora. 

The  man  turned  and  almost  stumbled  against  Dan. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Dan. 

The  departing  man  muttered  a  reply  and  hurried 
on. 

Dan  walked  into  the  gilt-and-white  sitting-room, 
and,  when  Cora  had  followed  him,  closed  the  door. 

§  5.  "  Now  then,"  he  demanded,  "  what  in  the 
hell  does  this  mean?  " 

There  was  a  mist  before  his  eyes.  The  French 
clock  on  the  mantelpiece,  the  mirror  behind  it,  the 
frail  chairs,  and  the  deep  sofa  revolved  slowly  about 
him.  His  lips  trembled. 

She  looked  at  him  with  her  satiated  eyes  full  of  a 
scornful  amazement. 

"  What,"  she  asked  with  tilted  chin,  "  do  you 
mean?" 

"  Oh !  "  He  made  a  gesture  with  his  heavy  hand 
that  brought  it  into  sharp  contact  with  the  back  of 
a  chair.  "  Don't  try  to  tell  me  I  didn't  see  anything. 
You  were  kissing  that  old  man." 

Cora's  eyes  were  cool. 

"  Of  course  I  was,"  she  said. 

"You  admit  it?" 

"  You  just  told  me  not  to  deny  it." 

"  And  yjDu  made  a  date  with  him." 

"  Of  course  I  did.  It  is  for  to-morrow  afternoon 
at  two." 

He  wanted  to  strike  her,  but  a  sob  shook  him. 

"  Look  here,"  said  Cora,  eyeing  him  serenely: 
'  "how  do  you  think  I  live,  anyhow?" 


29o      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

He  did  not  answer.  He  knew  now  that  he  had 
not  thought  enough  about  that. 

"  Well,  I'll  tell  you  how  I  don't  live,"  the  woman 
continued:  "I  don't  live  on  the  scraps  I  get  from 
you.  They  don't  pay  for  my  cigarettes." 

The  sob  recurred.  He  did  not  want  to  show  his 
grief.  He  walked  to  the  window  and  tried  to  look 
down  at  the  hot  street;  but  the  street. was  blurred. 
Money!  It  was  always  the  lack  of  money  that  de- 
defrauded  him.  You  could  have  anything  with 
money;  without  it  you  could  not  hold  fast  even  to 
that  which  you  had.  His  shoulders  rose  and  fell 
spasmodically. 

Then  Cora,  having  sufficiently  cowed  him,  came 
forward  and  took  his  hands  and  laid  her  cool  cheek 
against  his.  She  was  growing  too  old  to  attract 
other  young  men,  and  from  this  young  man  she  ob- 
tained something  that  she  wanted.  Money  she  must 
seek  elsewhere,  but  just  now  she  needed  Dan.  She 
told  him  that  she  loved  him  and  hated  all  her  other 
admirers.  She  said  that  she  was  poor  and  had  to 
make  a  living,  but  she  loved  him.  She  whispered 
these  things  in  his  ear  and  wept. 

Suddenly  Dan  turned  and  took  her  fiercely  in  his 
arms. 

When  he  left  next  morning  he  had  spent  fifteen 
dollars  for  their  dinner  at  a  new  restaurant  and  had 
given  Cora  sixty. 


XVIII 

THE  reply  that  Mrs.  Barnes  sent  to  her  son's 
inquiry  was  reassuring.     Old  Tom  had  had  a 
turn  for  the  better.     He  still  kept  his  bed, 
but  the  attack  was  a  light  one,  and  the  doctor  did 
not  consider  it  at  all  necessary  for  Dan  to  come  to 
Americus. 

Dan  breathed  easier.  He  called  on  Twigg  and 
paid  him  the  hundred  dollars  remaining  from  the 
second  Asche  loan. 

"  All  right,"  grumbled  Twigg,  as  his  bony  fingers 
closed  upon  the  bills.  "I'll  hold  off  a  while;  but 
when  do  I  get  the  rest?  " 

Dan  squared  his  jaw. 

"  You  oughtn't  to  get  it  at  all,"  he  said,  with  the 
real  sense  of  his  injury. 

"  Why  not  ?     Didn't  I  cure  you  ?  " 
*  You  overcharged  me." 

"  I  guess,"  said  Twigg,  blinking  his  pink  eyelids, 
"  it  was  worth  all  I  charged  and  more."  He  smiled 
malignly.  "  Your  boss  would  think  so,  too,"  he 
added;  "  and  if  I  don't  get  the  rest  I  may  have  to 
ask  his  opinion." 

Dan's  anger  collapsed.  He  pleaded  for  a  delay 
and  at  last  got  it. 

"  I  don't  want  to  be  hard  on  you,"  said  Twigg, 
who  had  received  more  than  he  had  expected,  but 
who  could  not  afford  to  let  pass  this  opportunity  to 

291 


292      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

recover  the  entire  amount  of  his  bill.  "  It  isn't  pro- 
fessional. Only  I've  got  a  lot  of  heavy  expenses  to 
meet,  and  I  must  have  the  rest  sometime.  I'll  give 
you  till  the  first  of  November.  That's  fair,  isn't  it? 
It's  just  as  if  this  was  a  promissory  note." 

Dan  left  the  office  considerably  relieved;  but  his 
relief  was  of  short  life.  He  reflected  that,  on 
November  first,  his  Van  Voorne  loans  would  again 
fall  due;  and  he  read  in  a  chance  magazine  an  ac- 
count of  the  loan-shark  business,  wherein  it  was 
asserted  that  the  sharks  refused  renewals  when  their 
watched  clients'  positions  became  uncertain.  He  let 
the  days  slip  by,  however,  until  the  middle  of  October, 
hoping  for  some  fortunate  chance  that  never  ap- 
peared. 

§  2.  What  appeared  was  Lysander  Fry,  splendid 
now  in  a  fur-lined  overcoat,  worn  unbuttoned  to  show 
the  fur. 

"  Come  out  to  lunch,"  said  Fry;  "  I've  got  a  good 
thing  for  you." 

When  they  faced  each  other  across  the  white  table 
of  a  down-town  restaurant,  Fry  began,  with  his 
sanguine  air  of  one  conferring  a  favor: 

"  Did  you  ever  hear  of  Suburban  Traction?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Dan.     "  What  about  it?  " 

"What  did  you  hear?"  Fry  parried,  smiling 
sapiently. 

"  I  don't  know.  We  used  to  do  a  little  business  in 
it  at  our  place." 

Fry  tapped  his  plate  with  a  thick  forefinger. 

"  Well,  let  me  tell  you  one  thing  at  the  start,  my 
son:  you're  going  to  do  a  lot  more." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      293 

Dan  did  not  much  care.  This  could  mean  no  gain 
for  him.  For  the  sake  of  saying  something  he  asked : 

"It's  a  Jersey  corporation,  isn't  it?" 

Fry  nodded. 

"  And  it's  got  a  big  thing  up  its  sleeve,"  he  added. 
"  Now  then:  can  you  keep  this  dark?  " 

Dan  thought  he  could. 

"  Well,"  said  Fry,  caressing  an  ear,  "  here's  the 


situation." 


It  appeared  that  the  Suburban  Traction  Company 
was  one  of  the  many  public-service  corporations 
organized  by  the  firm  of  promoters  by  which  Fry 
was  employed.  Its  ostensible  purpose  was  to  con- 
nect with  their  county-seat  the  small  communities  of 
which  Lawnhurst  was  one;  its  real  purpose,  thus  far 
carefully  concealed,  was  to  connect  both  these  com- 
munities and  the  county-seat  with  the  ferries  to  New 
York. 

Fry  was  enthusiastic  in  his  outline  of  the  plan  and 
sincere  in  his  enthusiasm.  All  successful  humbugs 
have  a  modicum  of  faith  in  themselves,  and  in  pro- 
portion as  they  have  that  faith  they  are  able  to  de- 
ceive others.  Fry  was  so  certain  of  the  money  to 
be  made  that  he  did  not  at  all  consider  the  means 
of  the  making.  His  own  efforts  had  secured  all  the 
necessary  franchises  but  one.  That  was  the  one  that 
would  give  Suburban  Traction  the  right  to  lay  its 
tracks  through  the  county-seat.  The  way  was  clear 
up  to  the  city-limits  and  beyond  them.  There  re- 
mained only  this  one  link  to  forge.  Then  the  chain 
would  be  complete  and,  the  purpose  becoming  clear, 
the  stock  was  sure  to  rise.  Meantime,  it  was  to  be 
obtained  for  a  song. 


294      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"The  county-seat  is  Medford,  isn't  it?"  asked 
Dan. 

"  Yes." 

"  I  thought  so.  Harold  Richardson  told  me  some- 
thing about  a  company  wanting  a  franchise  there." 

Fry's  hooked  nose  thrust  itself  forward. 

"  Harold  Richardson?     What'd  he  say?  " 

"  Not  much."  Dan  reflected  that  what  Harold 
had  told  him  was  a  matter  of  common  knowledge. 
"  He's  against  it.  He  said  they  were  getting  up  a 
reform  movement  and  would  elect  enough  men  to  the 
Medford  councils  to  prevent  you  people  from  getting 
the  franchise  for  a  cent  less  than  it  is  worth." 

"Pff!"  sneered  Fry.  "I  know  all  about  Rich- 
ardson and  his  crowd,  and  I've  no  use  for  these  kid- 
glove  politicians.  Fact  is,  they  want  to  sell  to  an- 
other company — something  or  other  that  old  E.  Q. 
Richardson's  in.  That'd  smash  our  stock.  They 
won't  do  it,  though." 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  said  Dan.  "  Harold 
seemed  to  think  they  could  get  an  easy  majority. 
And  if  the  majority  want  the  other  company— 

"  Oh,"  interrupted  Fry,  like  a  disgusted  elder 
brother,  "  you  make  me  tired,  Dan.  Honest,  you  do. 
Majorities?  The  rule  of  dunces!  What  difference 
does  it  make  to  the  majority  which  company  gets 
the  franchise?  Ours'll  give  just  as  good  service  as 
theirs." 

"  I  suppose  theirs  will  pay  more  for  the  right." 

"  Maybe  they  would,  if  they  had  the  chance.  But 
who'd  get  the  money?  " 

"  The  city  would." 

"  Well,  would  that  help  your  blessed  majority? 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      295 

They'd  have  to  pay  five  cents  apiece  for  a  car-ride 
just  the  same.  Now,  what  I  wanted  to  tell  you  is 
this :  I  always  meant  to  let  you  in  on  the  ground  floor 
of  a  good  thing  if  I  could,  and  here's  a  fine  buy. 
Nobody  knows  about  the  New  York  end  of  the 
scheme  outside  of  the  insiders,  and  nobody  will  know 
till  just  before  election.  Now's  your  chance.  You'd 
better  come  in :  it's  a  sure  thing." 

"  Thank  you,  no,"  said  Dan,  dryly.  "  I've  been 
waiting  all  my  life  for  the  sure  things  to  happen. 
They  never  do." 

What  he  was  thinking  was  vastly  different.  He 
was  thinking:  "Here  is  the  opportunity  I  have  so 
long  waited  for;  here  is  perhaps  the  chance  to  become 
a  successful  man,  and  just  because  of  a  few  women  I 
haven't  the  little  capital  necessary  to  the  taking  of 
it!" 

"  Don't  be  a  fool,"  said  Fry.  "  This  stock's  par 
at  a  hundred.  Some  of  it  got  into  the  hands  of  a 
crowd  we  didn't  like,  so  we  knocked  it  and  put  up  a 
bluff  of  doing  nothing  with  the  scheme,  and  now  you 
can  pick  up  all  you  want  at  five  a  share.  We've 
bided  our  time.  We've  just  let  the  thing  seem  to 
rot.  But  the  day  before  election,  when  our  candi- 
dates come  out  with  the  truth  and  tell  the  people 
they're  running  against  the  reformers  to  join  Medford 
to  New  York,  the  stock'll  jump  to  two  hundred. 
Two  hundred?  Why,  once  we  get  our  men  in 
councils,  those  shares'll  more  than  triple  their  par 
value !  " 

"  Are  you  sure  your  candidates  will  stand  by  you 
if  they  are  elected?  "  asked  Dan. 

"  I  ought  to  be,"  grinned  Fry.      "  I  bought  'em." 


296      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  And  are  you  sure  they'll  be  elected?  " 

41  Leave  that  to  me.  That's  part  of  my  regular 
job,  electing  is.  But  don't  you  see?"  Fry's  fore- 
finger again  came  into  play.  "  Even  if  they're  licked, 
they're  coming  out  with  the  news  of  the  New  York 
connection  a  day  or  two  before  election ;  that's  where 
they  make  their  appeal  to  the  voters,  for  the  re- 
formers won't  dare  to  give  away  their  own  scheme 
to  sell;  and  anybody  that  has  cold  feet  can  buy  now 
and  sell  then.  Look  here,"  he  broke  off,  "  I'm  tell- 
ing you  this  as  a  favor.  What  do  I  get  out  of  just 
telling  you  ?  All  I  want  is  to  see  you  in  on  a  melon- 
cutting." 

Dan  groaned. 

"A  melon-cutting?"  he  repeated.  "You  talk 
as  if  I  was  a  magnate." 

"  No,  I  don't,"  said  Fry;  "  I  talk  as  if  you  knew 
a  good  thing  when  you  saw  it  and  as  if  you  had  a 
couple  of  hundred  dollars." 

"  Well,  I  haven't  twenty,"  Dan  sighed.  He 
burst  into  sudden  confession.  He  told,  in  a  few  hur- 
ried words,  the  story  of  his  financial  straits.  "  You 
know  Twigg,"  he  concluded;  "  can't  you  get  him  to 
ease  up  on  me?" 

Fry  listened  with  a  calm  face,  the  fingers  of 
one  hand  still  pulling  at  an  ear. 

"  Hum,"  he  said.  "  I  wish  I  could,  but  I  know 
I  can't." 

"  He's  as  hard  as  all  that?  "  asked  Dan. 

"  He's  hard  up,"  Fry  answered.  "  I  happen  to 
know  he  needs  all  he  can  get  and  more.  I'd  lend  you 
myself  if  I  could;  only " 

"  Oh,   that's   all  right."     Dan  smiled  miserably. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      297 

"  But  you  see,"  he  added,  "  that  this  is  the  wrong 

time  to  advise  me  to  buy  stocks." 

"  You'd  be  all  clear  if  you  bought  S.  T." 

"  Brokers  don't  advance  credit  to  other  brokers' 

clerks." 

"  But  just  think !     There  must  be  some  way." 
Dan  rose.     He  was  ashamed  of  himself  because 

of  his  revelation. 

"  Perhaps  there  is,"  he  said,  though  his  heart  was 

hopeless.     "  I'll  see.     Anyhow,   I'm  ever  so  much 

obliged   to    you.     Now    I've    got    to    get   back    to 

work." 

§  3.  He  returned  to  the  office  sick  at  heart.  He 
heard  daily  of  wonderful  "  buys  " ;  but  he  had  learned 
to  distrust  those  which  were  within  his  own  means, 
for  he  did  not  forget  his  previous  ventures.  Yet 
here  was  something  that  carried  conviction;  here  was 
the  opportunity  of  a  life-time.  For  five  hundred  dol- 
lars he  could  buy  one  hundred  shares  and  might  win 
even  nearly  twenty  thousand  dollars.  The  possibili- 
ties staggered  him.  But  five  hundred?  If  he  had 
only  one  hundred ! 

He  sought  Silverstone  and  asked  for  an  increase 
of  salary. 

The  dark-browed  partner  listened  without  any 
change  of  expression  on  his  handsome  face. 

"  No,"  he  said,  when  Dan  had  finished.  "  This 
cannot  be."  He  spoke  in  his  slow,  unaccented  Eng- 
lish, with  no  feeling,  but  with  perfect  firmness. 
"  This  war  upset  everything.  We  are  not  yet  doing 
our  old  quantity  of  business." 

"  There  isn't  any  chance  at  all?  "  asked  Dan. 


298      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Silverstone  made  a  quick  gesture  of  dissent. 

"  None,"  said  he.     "  I  am  sorry." 

"  The  work  is  just  as  hard  as  it  ever  was,"  Dan 
protested. 

"  And  the  pay  is  no  lower,"  replied  Silverstone. 

"  But "  began  Dan. 

"  You  force  me,"  his  employer  slowly  interrupted, 
"  to  say  that  I  am  not  altogether  pleased  with  the 
way  you  do  your  work,  Mr.  Barnes.  You  are  often 
late  arriving  here.  You  are  always  heavy  in  the 
mornings.  You  show  lately  no  sign  of  getting  ahead; 
I  see  no  reason  for  raising  your  pay." 

Dan  boiled  with  rage,  the  more  so  because  he  felt 
that  what  Silverstone  said  was  the  truth. 

"  Silverstone !  "  called  O'Neill.  His  chirping 
voice  came  from  behind  the  thin  partition  of  the 
neighboring  office. 

"  I  shall  be  there  right  away,"  answered  the  junior 
partner.  He  turned  to  Dan.  "  Good-afternoon, 
Mr.  Barnes,"  he  said  and  passed  into  the  room  from 
which  O'Neill  had  called. 

Dan  was  about  to  return  to  the  general  room.  He 
had  started  toward  it  when  he  heard  two  words  from 
the  office  into  which  Silverstone  had  just  disappeared. 
Those  words  were:  "Suburban  Traction."  The 
clerk's  eyes  gleamed.  He  saw  that  Silverstone  had 
left  the  door  slightly  ajar.  Dan  had  only  the  com- 
monest sort  of  conscience:  a  retro-active  one;  at  all 
events,  it  rarely  evinced  itself  before  the  commission 
of  the  wrong,  and  just  now  he  was  hot  with  ani- 
mosity. He  remembered  that  his  own  father  was  a 
shrewd  merchant  and  a  sharp  trader.  Business  was 
a  game  of  wits  in  which  the  craftier  player  won: 


I 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      299 

Dan  deliberately  bent  his  ear  to  the  crack  and  listened. 

O'Neill's  mincing  tones  were  distinctly  audible. 

" best  '  buy '  on  the  market/'  he  was  saying. 

"  I'm  going  in  deep,  and  I  thought  I'd  tip  you  off, 
Clarence." 

"  Is  it  safe?  "  asked  Silverstone. 

Dan's  breath  came  short. 

"  The  stingy  Jew!"  he  thought.  "  Silverstone 
won't  touch  it  if  it  isn't  a  cinch." 

O'Neill's  voice  replied.  He  had  inside  informa- 
tion. Dan  caught  the  first  words  of  an  exposition 
similar  to  that  which  Fry  had  delivered. 

But  of  that  exposition  he  heard  no  more.  He 
heard  instead  the  abrupt  opening  of  the  other  door. 
He  straightened  suddenly  and  confronted  the  round- 
shouldered  figure  of  Gideon  Giddey. 

The  old  man,  who  still  pottered  about  the  offices 
among  the  remnants  of  his  previous  duties,  was 
standing  with  a  ledger  held  in  both  his  thin  arms; 
his  scanty  neck  and  angular  chin  thrust  forward;  the 
nostrils  of  his  long  nose  dilating  like  those  of  a  scent- 
ing pointer;  his  toothless  mouth  tight  as  a  sprung 
trap,  and  the  twin  wisps  of  gray  hair,  brushed  for- 
ward over  his  ears  on  each  side  of  his  shining  pate, 
leveled  at  Dan  like  threatening  weapons. 

"  Come  out  of  that,"  said  Giddey. 

Dan's  surprise  was  so  great  that  his  anger  tri- 
umphed aver  his  fear. 

"  Oh,  shut  up !  "  he  retorted. 

"The  door?  Yes,  I'll  shut  it,"  replied  the  deaf 
man. 

He  deposited  the  ledger  on  a  table  and,  crossing 
to  the  spot  to  which  Dan  appeared  rooted,  closed 


I 

300      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  door  that  had  given  the  eavesdropper  his  oppor- 
tunity. 

"  Listen  to  me,"  said  Giddey.  His  eyes,  peering 
through  their  thick  glasses,  still  seemed  antagonistic, 
but  his  voice  was  low  and  not  unkind.  He  put  his 
frail  arm  about  Dan's  broad  shoulders.  "  Listen 
to  me,"  he  repeated.  "  I  notice  more  than  people 
think,  and  I  have  lived  a  long  time.  The  world  isn't 
bad;  it's  only  blind.  If  we  could  cure  its  blindness, 
it  would  be  a  changed  place ;  if  we  could  once  make  it 
see  right,  it  would  do  Right  Well,  that  is  the  way 
with  you,  too.  I  have  kept  my  eye  on  you;  I  know. 
Go  away  now.  I  shan't  say  anything." 

"  Say  anything?  "  echoed  Dan,  still  on  the  defen- 
sive. "  I  wasn't  doing  anything!  " 

Giddey  smiled  grimly. 

"  I'll  return  the  Scotch  verdict,"  he  replied:  "  Not 
guilty,  but  don't  repeat  the  offense."  He  nodded  to 
the  door  through  which  Dan  had  entered. 

§  4.  But  Dan  was  unrepentant.  As  when  he  was 
a  child,  he  felt  that  the  crime  lay  solely  in  being  de- 
tected. Beyond  that  his  mind  refused  to  go:  it  had 
place  for  the  consideration  of  only  this  chance  of 
success  that  was  slipping  through  his  fingers.  Re- 
gardless of  Fry's  command  to  secrecy,  he  that  even- 
ing telephoned  to  Harold,  exacted  a  promise  of 
silence,  and  repeated  the  news  concerning  Suburban 
Traction. 

"  We  both  need  money,"  he  concluded,  "  and  I 
thought  that  perhaps  you  would  know  of  some  way 
so  we  could  get  enough  to  buy  this  stock  and  make  a 
regular  killing." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      301 

Harold's  reply  was  not  consoling.  His  need  was 
desperate.  He  was  heart  and  soul  in  the  reform 
movement,  but  found  that  money  was  required,  and 
a  great  deal  of  it,  at  every  step.  Unless  he  could  get 
some,  he  would  certainly  lose  the  election,  and  how 
to  get  even  enough  thus  to  make  more  he  could  not 
guess. 

"  Your  father "  suggested  Dan. 

l<  Won't  cough  up  another  copper,"  Harold  re- 
plied. 

"  Can't  you  think  of  any  scheme?" 

"  I've  got  a  headache  trying." 

"  You  understand  that  we  could  sell  at  a  big  profit 
just  before  election  if  your  ticket  was  going  to  win  ? 

11 1  know  that,  but  knowing  it  doesn't  help  any." 

They  racked  their  brains,  but  to  no  purpose,  and 
at  last  rang  off  with  an  agreement  to  meet  on  the 
following  evening. 

§  5.  During  the  intervening  day,  however,  events 
conspired  against  Dan.  The  only  note  of  relief  was 
a  letter  from  Mrs.  Barnes  announcing  her  husband's 
slow  and  slight  but  steady  improvement.  With  it 
came  two  other  letters :  one  from  Twigg,  reminding 
Dan  of  the  approach  of  November  first  and  recalling 
the  doctor's  threat  to  speak  to  Dan's  employers;  the 
other  from  Van  Voorne  &  Co.,  curtly  announcing  the 
fact  that  the  clerk's  note  would  fall  due  upon  the 
same  date*  and  as  briefly  adding  that  the  firm  re- 
gretted its  inability  to  accept  a  renewal.  An  hour 
later  Cora  telephoned  to  say  that  the  proprietor  of 
the  restaurant  to  which  Dan  was  in  the  habit  of  taking 
her  had,  when  she  dined  alone  there  the  night  before, 


302      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

expressed  some  anxiety  about  the  size  of  the  young 
man's  bill.  She  would  like,  she  added,  to  borrow 
twenty  dollars,  and,  when  Dan  perforce  refused  the 
money,  she  told  him  angrily  not  to  come  to  see  her 
again  until  he  was  able  to  do  something  for  her. 

Dan  came  from  the  telephone-booth  with  a  pale 
face.  He  saw  that  his  whole  life  had  been  torn 
between  two  passions:  the  passion  of  sex  and  the 
passion  for  success.  The  former,  in  the  bottom  of 
his  heart  he  believed  to  be  wrong,  though  he  knew 
it  held  him  fast  and  did  not  know  why ;  the  latter  he 
was  equally  sure  was  right,  and  the  satisfaction  of 
both  he  saw  growing  momentarily  less  and  less  pos- 
sible. 

Halfway  across  the  room  he  »  icountered  the  whis- 
kered Mr.  Richardson  in  all  his  customary  dignity 
of  a  frock-coat  and  white  waistcoat. 

"  Ah,  Daniel,"  said  Harold's  father,  seizing  Dan's 
hand,  "  I  was  just  looking  for  you.  I  am  in 
a  hurry  to-day.  I  have  to  attend  a  meeting  of  the 
Board  of  Directors  of  the  Home  for  the  Widows  of 
Non-Union  Workingmen." 

Dan  bowed.  He  scarcely  heard  what  was  said, 
but  he  knew  that  Mr.  Richardson  practiced  the 
sketchy  patronage  of  Projects  that  he  considered 
Worthy.  Thinking  of  how  much  he  himself  had  to 
hide,  it  flashed  through  the  clerk's  brain,  as  he 
vacantly  regarded  Mr.  Richardson,  that  dignity  is  a 
valuable  mask  and  that  most  of  the  men  who  wear 
it  conceal  behind  it  all  the  desires  of  which  they 
are  ashamed. 

*  Yes,  sir,"  he  was  saying.     "  Is  there  anything  I 
can  do  for  you?  " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      303 

"  There  is.  As  I  say,  I  am  in  a  hurry.  I  seldom 
hurry.  The  more  haste,  the  less  speed:  in  my  wide 
experience  I  have  always  found  that  true.  But  time 
and  tide  wait  for  no  man,  Daniel;  remember  that. 
The  Board  must  be  in  session  at  this  minute.  How 
is  Pennsylvania  selling?  " 

Dan  glanced  at  the  figured  blackboard  that  ran  the 
length  of  the  office. 

"  Fifty-three  and  three-eighths,"  he  answered. 
"  Oh,  no;  that's  Erie  First  Preferred.  Pennsylvania 
is  a  hundred  and  twenty-three.  It's  par  at  fifty,  but 
New  York  reckons  on  the  hundred  basis " 

1  Yes,  yes,  I  know.  Of  course  I  know  that." 
Mr.  Richardson  produced  a  check-book.  "  I  want 
you  to  buy  me  a  do?m  shares.  My  little  daughter's 
birthday  is  on  the  fifteenth,  and  then  I  always  buy  a 
safe  investment  for  her,  you  know.  You  can  deliver 
it  any  time  before  then.  How  much  will  that 
be?" 

Dan  seized  a  pad  and  figured. 

"  Seven  hundred  and  thirty-eight  and  eight  thirty- 
one:  that's  seven  forty-six  thirty-one." 

Mr.  Richardson's  immaculate  hands  began  hur- 
riedly making  out  the  check. 

"  How  is  my  old  friend,  your  father?"  he  in- 
quired. 

"  He  seems  to  be  getting  along  very  well  now," 
replied  Dan,  who  had  told  his  inquirer  of  Tom 
Barnes's  illness  when  the  first  news  arrived,  and  who 
resented  the  absent-minded  manner  in  which  this  ques- 
tion was  asked. 

"  Ah,"  continued  Mr.  Richardson,  writing  rapidly. 
"  I  am  glad  to  hear  that.  Poor  old  Daniel  Barnes! 


304      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Let  me  see:  you  were  named  for  him,   of  course, 
weren't  you?  " 

"No,"  said  Dan,  rather  sharply;  "  my  father's 
name  is  Thomas  L.  Barnes  and  I  am  Daniel  W." 

"  Oh,  yes,  yes.  To  be  sure."  Richardson  com- 
pleted his  writing  and  handed  the  check  to  Dan. 
"  Well,  here  you  are.  I  must  be  going." 

He  went  out,  and  Dan  started  to  register  the  order. 
By  the  merest  chance,  however,  he  looked  first  at  the 
check:  Mr.  Richardson's  absent-mindedness  had 
served  the  investor  ill;  the  check,  instead  of  being 
made  out  to  O'Neill  &  Silverstone,  was  made  out  to 
the  name  that  Dan  had  uttered  while  Mr.  Richard- 
son was  writing:  the  name  of  Daniel  W.  Barnes. 

"  See  here !  "  called  Dan. 

He  looked  up,  but  Mr.  Richardson  had  gone,  and 
nobody  heard  the  summons. 

Dan's  mouth  remained  open  for  fully  half  a  min- 
ute. The  check  dangled  from  his  limp  fingers. 
Then,  slowly,  he  folded  it  and  placed  it  in  his  waist- 
coat pocket. 

What  did  he  mean  to  do  with  it?  He  did  not 
know.  He  thought  of  telephoning  to  Mr.  Richard- 
son at  the  board-meeting,  but  Mr.  Richardson  had 
not  told  him  where  the  board  met.  He  thought  of 
taking  the  horrid  bit  of  pink  paper  to  Silverstone, 
but  he  hated  Silverstone  and  did  not  want  to  see  him. 
There  was  O'Neill,  to  be  sure,  but,  before  Dan  could 
decide  upon  O'Neill,  that  member  of  the  firm  hopped 
rapidly  through  the  office  and  left  it  for  the  day. 

The  routine  work  swirled  by  the  clerk  and  claimed 
his  attention.  Other  customers  appeared.  There 
was  a  flurry  in  Rock  Island. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      305 

And  all  the  while,  like  some  blind  monster  in  the 
tideless  depths  of  the  sea,  there  lurked  in  the  depths 
of  Dan's  consciousness  a  thought  that  he  dared  not 
rouse. 

§  6.  "  I've  given  up  highballs,"  said  Harold  that 
evening.  "  Since  I've  gone  into  politics,  I  like  my 
whiskey,  like  my  women:  straight." 

He  drank,  at  all  events,  a  great  deal  of  whiskey; 
they  both  drank  a  great  deal. 

"  I've  got  to  have  more  money  " :  that  was  Har- 
old's constant  complaint.  "  I  haven't  the  ghost  of  a 
show  at  election  if  I  don't  get  it,  and  yet  this  is  my 
Big  Chance." 

He  said  that  it  was  his  chance  to  convince  Madge 
that  he  really  amounted  to  something;  that  it  was 
his  chance  to  "  make  good  "  and  to  do  good.  He 
dilated  on  the  benefits  to  Medford  of  a  clean  business 
administration  by  clean  business  men.  He  denied 
Fry's  story  that  the  Reformers  would  unduly  favor 
another  corporation.  He  stood  for  honest  govern- 
ment. 

He  had  bet  a  little  on  his  own  election;  he  had  to 
do  that;  it  was  customary;  it  inspired  confidence.  But 
he  knew  that,  unless  he  had  more  money  to  spend,  he 
would  be  defeated.  Money  was  imperative.  The 
bad  traditions  of  the  corrupt  politicians  had  made  it 
so.  When-the  corrupt  politicians  were  overthrown, 
things  would  be  different,  but  meantime  one  must  meet 
a  machine  with  a  machine;  one  must  employ  under- 
lings that  knew  the  game ;  one  must  grease  the  under- 
lings' palms  and  not  ask  too  many  questions  about 
their  methods.  The  only  way  to  beat  the  devil  was 


3o6      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

to  fight  him  with  flame.     If  Harold  could  but  get  the 
money.    .    .    .  ! 

With  trembling  fingers  Dan  produced  the  elder 
Richardson's  check  and  laid  it  on  the  bar-room  table 
that  was  between  them. 

Harold  took  it  up. 
'  Where  did  you  get  this?  "  he  demanded. 

Dan  told  him. 

"  Seven  hundred  dollars !  "  breathed  Harold. 

They  looked  at  each  other,  both  faces  white. 

;t  Why — why    with    seven    hundred "    began 

Harold. 

Their  glances  fell. 

"  It's  a  lot  of  money,"  said  Dan.  "  If  we  only 
had  it  and  bought  Suburban !  It  was  offered  at  five 
to-day  and  no  demand."  He  repeated  what  he  had 
heard  O'Neill  tell  Silverstone.  "  If  we  bought  at 
five  outright " 

"  Outright?  "  said  Harold.     "  If  we  bought  on  a 

margin How — how  long  does  it  take  for  checks 

to  get  back  to  the  man  that  draws  them?  " 

Dan  choked. 

"  How  often  does  your  father  have  his  book  bal- 
anced?" 

"  On  the  fifteenth  of  every  month,  regularly.  He's 
as  precise  as  a  New  England  housewife.  By  that 
time » 

"  And  we  would  sell  as  soon  as  the  stock  rose 
before  election.  It  wouldn't  matter  how  the  vote 


went." 


"  It  wouldn't  matter  a  straw.     Then  we  could  buy 

Pennsylvania  for  the  governor,  and " 

Their  voices  dropped  to  whispers,  fell  into  silence ; 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      307 

but  both  were  thinking  the  same  thing.  The  money 
would  be  borrowed,  nothing  more.  That  was  some- 
thing that  was  being  done  every  day  by  the  men  that 
were  making  America  the  greatest  country  in  the 
world.  They  organized  companies  and  invested  the 
surplus  of  the  stockholders'  money  in  other  compa- 
nies. Everybody  did  it.  It  was  something  under- 
stood. Here  was  the  chance  and  here  too  was  that 
ancient  sophistry:  "  Just  this  once,"  the  constant  ex- 
cuse of  the  oldest  offender. 

Harold  gulped  another  drink  and  rose  unsteadily. 

"  An  aristocrat  suavely  takes  what  he  can;  a  gen- 
tleman gracefully  gives  what  he  may,"  said  Harold. 
"  I'm  not  a  gentleman;  I'm  an  aristocrat.  Giddey 
calls  me  that;  so  does  Madge.  They're  neither,  so 
they  ought  to  know."  He  put  his  hand  on  Dan's 
shoulder.  "  This,"  he  concluded,  "  is  our  real  start 
in  life." 

The  next  morning,  Dan  telephoned  to  the  elder 
Richardson.  The  clerk  said  that  he  had  just  mailed 
the  receipt  and  memorandum  of  the  transaction  in 
Pennsylvania  stock,  but  that  he  had  no  sooner  sent 
the  letter  than  he  realized  that  he  had  forgotten  to 
address  the  envelope. 

It  was  no  matter,  Mr.  Richardson  answered,  so 
long  as  the  stock  was  at  the  office.  He  would  call 
for  it  on  the  fourteenth. 

Then  Dan.  went  out  to  a  bucket-shop  and  invested 
all  but  a  scant  reserve  of  the  money,  buying  Suburban 
Traction  on  a  margin. 

§  7.  The  agony  of  the  next  few  days  was  too 
intense  to  leave  thought  for  anything  else.  Dan 


308      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

pored  over  the  Medford  newspapers  daily  sent  him 
by  Harold.  He  performed  his  duties  in  the  office 
automatically.  He  sat  often  with  his  eyes  on  vacancy 
and,  when  anyone  spoke  to  him  without  warning,  he 
jumped. 

On  the  Saturday  before  the  election,  Fry  tele- 
phoned. 

"  Did  you  manage  to  raise  that  dough?  "  he  asked. 

"  Yes,"  said  Dan,  the  receiver  shaking  against  his 
ear.  "Why?" 

"  Because  it's  going  to  be  the  best  thing  ever. 
I'm  talking  from  Medford  now.  Wait  till  you  see 
to-morrow's  papers.  We  got  it  all  fixed.  Don't 
sell.  Hold  on  till  after  election.  That'll  triple  your 
winnings.  We'll  win.  It's  a  dead  sure  thing." 

As  he  had  been  doing  ever  since  the  night  when 
the  bargain  was  struck,  Dan  watched  the  reports  of 
Suburban  Traction.  They  did  not  vary.  The  stock 
was  inactive,  supine. 

He  called  up  Twigg  and,  with  more  difficulty, 
Peter  Asche.  He  begged  them  to  wait  until  the  even- 
ing of  the  Wednesday  following  Tuesday's  election. 
He  hurriedly,  almost  incoherently,  explained  that  then 
he  would  be  in  a  position  to  pay  their  claims.  When 
he  offered  them  a  bonus  for  delay,  they  consented. 

Even  the  New  York  papers  on  Sunday  contained 
the  news  at  which  Lysander  Fry  had  hinted.  The 
promoters'  candidates  for  the  Medford  councils  had 
made  public  Suburban  Traction's  plan  to  connect 
Medford  and  its  country  directly  with  the  city-ferries. 
The  people  were  reported  as  enthusiastically  on  the 
side  of  "  progress  " :  reform  would  lose. 

With  the  opening  of  the  market  on  Monday,  the 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      309 

gamblers  showed  that  they  had  become  aware  of  the 
existence  of  S.  T.  The  stock  was  galvanized.  It 
stirred.  It  rose.  It  leaped  to  twenty-five,  to  fifty. 
Thence  it  began  to  climb  steadily  toward  a  hun- 
dred. 

Dan  flew  to  the  telephone  and  clung  to  it.  For 
an  hour  he  could  not  get  Harold,  who  was  away 
from  his  law-office,  campaigning. 

"  Have  you  seen  it?  "  gasped  Dan,  when  the  oper- 
ator had  at  last  tracked  Harold.  "  This  is  Barnes. 
Have  you  seen  it?  " 

There  was  no  need  for  him  to  be  more  specific. 

"  Of  course  I've  seen  it,"  answered  Harold.  His 
voice  was  hoarse. 

"  I'm  just  waiting  for  your  agreement  to  sell,"  said 
Dan. 

"  Sell?  "  Harold  shrieked  the  word.  "  Don't  be 
such  a  double-barreled  fool !  I  won't  consent !  Do 
you  hear?  I  won't  consent!  " 

"  But  there's  an  election  here,  too.  The  market 
won't  be  doing  business  to-morrow." 

"  What  difference  does  that  make?  Listen.  I've 

just  got  the  inside  figures,  and Damn  this 

'phone!  Get  off  the  wire  there,  whoever  you  are! 
Hello,  Central :  quit  cutting  in !  Can  you  hear  me, 
Dan?  Hello,  Dan;  can  you  hear?  " 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Dan.  "  It's  all  right.  Go 
ahead." 

"  Well,  we're  whipped,  I  tell  you — the  reformers 
are  whipped.  I've  got  the  complete  inside  informa- 
tion. Our  own  people  give  up  the  fight.  Of  course 
they're  not  telling  it  outside,  but  it's  straight.  The 
reformers  are  licked.  You  hold  on  to  that  stock. 


3io      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

On  Wednesday  morning  it'll  be  worth  two  hundred. 
Don't  dare  to  sell  a  minute  sooner !  " 

Dan  protested,  but  his  protests  were  vain.  Harold 
was  sure  of  his  information,  and  at  last  conquered 
by  a  sheer  preponderance  of  energy. 

"  All  right,"  said  Dan,  still  half-doubtful,  "  I  hope 
you're  right." 

He  hung  up  the  receiver  and  went  trembling  back 
to  his  work. 

§  8.  Before  midnight  on  Tuesday  he  had  learned 
his  lesson  in  the  uncertainties  of  the  ballot.  The  un- 
expected had  happened:  Harold  and  one  or  two  of 
his  fellows  were  defeated,  but  the  majority  of  his 
party's  candiates  were  chosen;  that  "  rule  of  the 
dunces  "  at  which  Fry  sneered  had  elected  the  reform 
ticket  in  the  Medford  councils.  Suburban  Traction 
was  a  dead  issue. 


XIX 

WHY  had  he  done  it?  Why  had  he  been  such 
a  fool?  Why  had  he  listened  to  Fry  in 
the  first  place  ?  Why  had  he  not  sold  be- 
fore election  day  ?  Striding  through  the  city  streets, 
his  head  bent,  his  hands  deep  in  his  overcoat  pockets, 
Dan  lashed  himself  with  all  those  futile  questions, 
with  all  those  hopeless  glances  backward,  which  the 
conscience  and  the  formerly  dormant  sagacity  find  so 
ready  to  hand  when  error  has  become  apparently 
irretrievable. 

He  hated  the  men  that  he  had  been  brought  up 
to  admire,  the  men  of  success,  because  they  could  do 
these  things  and  win.  He  hated  woman-kind,  be- 
cause he  thought  that  women  had  brought  him  to  this 
pass.  He  hated  Fry  for  the  first  temptation  and 
Harold  for  the  last  mistake. 

What  was  to  be  done  now?  Dan  shuddered. 
How  could  he  return  to  the  office  to-morrow  and 
await  the  inevitable  approach  of  discovery?  Dis- 
missal, disgrace,  even  prison,  attended  there,  and  he 
had  not  money  enough  to  run  away.  His  father 
and  his  mother 

He  stopped  at  one  saloon  after  another  and  drank 
heavily.  He  had  meant  no  wrong.  His  desire  had 
been  only  toward  those  things  which  he  had  been 
taught  were  the  most  desirable  and  those  things  which 
the  silences  of  his  parents  had  early  unfitted  him  to 

311 


3i2      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

resist.  He  suspected  Fry  and  Harold  of  plotting  his 
ruin  as  readily  as  a  drunken  wife  will  charge  her 
husband  with  immorality.  He  drank  again  and 
again,  and  with  the  mounting  of  the  liquor  to  his 
head,  fear  mounted  to  his  heart. 

He  passed  the  house  in  which  Cora  lived.  Seeing 
a  light  from  her  sitting-room  window,  he  entered. 
He  knocked  at  her  door. 

"  Come  in,"  said  Cora. 

She  had  evidently  just  returned.  Her  cloak  was 
lying  across  one  chair.  A  silk  skirt  was  tossed  upon 
another.  Cora,  in  a  pink  and  gold  kimona,  was 
stretched  upon  the  sofa,  a  cigarette  between  her 
fingers,  her  corn-colored  hair  framing  her  hard  face 
against  a  dark  velvet  pillow.  She  appeared  to  have 
forgotten  her  order  to  Dan  that  he  was  not  to  come 
to  her  empty-handed. 

"  What  in  the  world's  the  matter  with  you?  "  she 
asked. 

She  might  well  ask  it.  The  light  fell  full  on 
Dan's  crumpled  figure.  His  cheeks  were  pale  and 
puffed,  his  mouth,  though  not  firm,  was  contracted, 
his  wide  eyes  bloodshot.  The  hand  with  which  he 
removed  his  hat  trembled. 

"  Cora,"  he  said  thickly,  "  I'm  done  for." 

She  got  up  and  kissed  him  lightly  on  his  cold 
cheek. 

"  You're  just  drunk,"  she  said.  "  Have  a 
drink." 

She  went  to  a  little  buffet  and  poured  him  some 
whiskey. 

"  No  water,"  said  Dan,  as  he  saw  her  reach  for 
a  syphon. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      313 

He  gulped  the  drink  and  began  to  walk  up  and 
down  the  room. 

"  Cut  it  out,"  said  Cora,  returning  comfortably 
to  her  sofa.  "  Come  over  here  and  tell  me  all  about 


it." 


Her  air  of  content  annoyed  him. 

"  Don't  talk  like  an  idiot,"  he  said  through  white 
lips.  "  I  tell  you  I'm  all  in.  I'm  down  and  out. 
I'm  ruined!"  ' 

In  a  hundred  words  he  sketched  rapidly  what  had 
happened. 

She  listened  with  that  interest  in  the  dramatic  which 
is  so  highly  developed  in  women  of  her  profession. 
But  her  interest,  as  with  all  such  women,  was  purely 
intellectual.  Except  where  her  own  material  needs 
were  touched,  her  sympathies,  too  long  drained  by 
her  exploiters,  had  become  niggardly. 

"  Oh,  cheer  up !  "  she  said,  when  he  had  finished. 
"  You'll  be  all  right  again  soon." 

"  How  can  I  be?  "  Dan  demanded.  "  I  can  never 
replace  that  money,  and,  if  I  could,  I  couldn't  pay 
those  bills." 

Cora  puffed  her  cigarette,  and  refastened  several 
invisible  wire  hair-pins  in  her  yellow  hair.  He  could 
see  the  muscles  of  her  long  throat  working  as  the 
smoke  was  drawn  into  her  lungs. 

".Try  another  plunge  in  the  market,"  she  sug- 
gested. "The  luck  can't  go  against  you  forever. 
You'll  win  next  time." 

"Plunge?"  Dan  extended  his  empty  hands. 
"My  God!  What  with?" 

She  was  beginning  to  weary  of  Dan.  While  he 
had  been  only  devoted  and  adoring,  she  delighted 


3 14      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

in  the  needed  sense  of  renewal  that  he  awakened  in 
her,  the  revival  of  emotions  and  sensations  that  she 
had  thought  lost  to  her.  But  lately  his  devotion  was 
divided,  his  adoration  scamped.  Perhaps  these  busi- 
ness difficulties  were  to  blame.  But  what  of  that? 
The  quality  that  had  moved  her  was  deteriorated, 
and  now  his  words  showed  her  clearly  that  there  was 
small  likelihood  that  his  financial  circumstances  would 
ever  permit  its  perfect  repair.  She  did  not  want  to 
be  hard  on  him,  but,  since  he  had  given  her  his  best, 
it  was  absurd  of  him,  it  was  even  rather  insulting 
of  him,  to  offer  her  his  second-best. 

"  Well,"  she  said,  "  what  do  you  want  me  to  do?  " 

"  I— I "  Dan  felt  about  in  his  brain.  "  I 

want  to  get  some  money  to  make  the  plunge,  or  else 
I  want  to  get  enough  money  to  get  out  of  the 
country." 

She  uncoiled  herself,  rose,  put  down  her  cigarette, 
and  came  forward. 

"  It's  you  that's  talking  like  an  idiot  now,"  she  said. 
"Money?  What  makes  you  think  I  have  any 
money?  Perhaps  I  saved  a  million  out  of  what  you 
gave  me !  " 

He  swallowed  the  taunt.  His  mouth  was  already 
bitter  with  the  shame  of  what  he  was  now  about 
to  propose. 

'You  can  get  some,"  he  said:  "you  know  a  lot 
of  men  that  have  money  to  burn." 

She  did  not  seem  to  consider  the  hint  nauseous. 
She  only  smiled  and  shook  her  head. 

"  Nothing  doing,"  she  said.  "  Men  don't  pay 
unless  they  get  something  for  it,  and  there  isn't  time 
for  me  to  give  that." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      315 

"  Then,"  replied  Dan,  "  I  guess  I've  got  to  go  to 
jail." 

He  sat  down  and  rested  his  head  in  his  large  hands. 

Cora's  expression  changed. 

"Are  they  after  you  now?  "  she  asked. 

"Who?"  Dan  stupidly  inquired. 

"  The  cops,  of  course." 

"  Oh,  no;  they  can't  find  it  out  for  a  day  or  two." 

"  Well,  you  mustn't  be  found  here  when  they  do 
get  you.  I  can't  have  that  sort  of  thing."  She  stood 
by  him,  running  her  fingers  through  his  disordered 
hair.  "  Brace  up,"  she  said.  "  A  lot  can  happen 
in  two  days.  Now,  I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do.  If 
you  don't  feel  like  going  home,  you  can  stay  here  to- 
night; but  if  they  do  get  you,  you  mustn't  bring  my 
name  into  it,  and  you  mustn't  come  back  here  till 
the  whole  thing's  blown  over.  Come  on.  Make  up 
your  mind.  Do  you  want  to  stay  here  to-night? 
I'm  tired  out;  I  can't  keep  on  talking  till  morning; 
I  must  get  some  sleep." 

Dan  got  to  his  feet. 

"  I  won't  stay,"  he  said.     "  Good-night" 

§  2.  Again  he  walked  the  streets.  In  the  face  of 
danger,  even  Cora  did  not  want  him.  He  nursed 
this  new  fox  in  his  bosom. 

Toward  daylight,  he  returned  to  his  boarding- 
house,  and  bathed  and  shaved  with  a  shaking  hand. 
The  long  e-ffect  of  routine  was  ordering  him  to  the 
office  and  commanding  him  to  present  there  a  re- 
spectable appearance. 

Once  Dan  was  at  his  daily  tasks,  his  punishment 
began.  The  lightest  phrase  was  translated  by  his 


316      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

now  morbidly  sensitive  brain  into  a  veiled  threat;  the 
most  casual  glance  became  a  gaze  of  suspicion.  It 
seemed  impossible  that  the  other  clerks  should  not 
know  what  he  had  been  doing,  could  not  read  his 
guilt  in  his  face.  O'Neill,  hopping  through  the  main 
room  and  whistling  to  himself,  seemed  to  be  trying 
to  conceal  accusation  beneath  a  mask  of  cheerfulness. 
Silverstone's  quiet  eyes  must  certainly  hold  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  facts.  Dan  remembered  a  jumble  of  de- 
tails from  various  newspaper  accounts  of  men 
arrested  for  crimes  such  as  he  had  committed.  He 
saw  the  detective  in  every  stranger  that  entered. 
The  palms  of  his  hands  were  damp  and  cold,  and, 
when  spoken  to,  he  started  violently. 

He  went  to  the  telephone  and  called  up  the  offices 
of  the  Suburban  Traction  Company  with  some  idea 
of  an  appeal  to  Fry;  but  he  was  informed  that  Fry 
had  gone  to  Trenton  on  business.  As  Dan  came 
from  the  telephone-booth,  he  ran  into  Harold. 

The  young  men  looked  at  each  other.  Each  saw 
in  his  friend  the  havoc  that  he  knew  his  own  face 
must  betray. 

"  My  God,"  said  Harold,  "  we're  in  for  it  now, 
aren't  we?" 

A  sudden  rage  flamed  in  Dan's  heart. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  and  it's  all  thanks  to  you!  " 

"I  know;  I  know."  Harold's  voice  broke.  He 
offered  no  explanation,  no  apology.  All  his  assur- 
ance had  been  torn  from  him.  "  It  was  my  fault. 
It's  rotten.  Just  rotten.  What  a  fool  I've  been !  " 

"You've  ruined  us,"  said  Dan;  "that's  what 
you've  done." 

Harold  nodded. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      317 

"What  a  fool,"  he  whispered.  "  It's— I  don't 
know  what  to  do.  What  would  Madge  say?  And 
the  governor?  " 

Dan  fearing  the  attention  of  the  other  clerks,  led 
him  to  the  doorway  and  thence  to  the  curb.  They 
talked  there,  Dan  bare-headed,  in  the  passing  crowd. 
His  heart  was  infuriated  against  his  friend. 

"  I'd  like  to  wring  your  neck,"  he  said. 

"You  ought  to,"  Harold  admitted.  "Where's 
Fry?" 

"  I  don't  know.  I  telephoned.  They  said  he  was 
in  Trenton." 

"  Of  course.  The  Irish  Embassy  again.  What 
does  he  care  for  us?  "  Harold  hung  his  head  and 
swallowed  hard.  "  If  I  had  this  to  do  over  again, 
I'll  bet  you  ten  to  one  I'd  never  do  it.  Nowadays 
we're  agnostics  in  the  cradle;  it's  doubt  and  diapers; 
but,  by  God,  I'd  like  to  pray." 

Disgust  seized  Dan.  Then,  as  suddenly,  the  sight 
of  this  weakness  in  one  whom  he  had  always  thought 
strong,  gave  him  a  sudden  strength.  He  gripped 
Harold's  shoulder. 

"Shut  up!"  he  said  sharply.  "Repent?  Of 
course  you  repent.  But  won't  you  soon  be  in  a  posi- 
tion to  repent  again?  Listen  to  me.  You  wrecked 
this  scheme.  It's  up  to  you  to  save  it,  and  you've 
got  to  save  it.  Do  you  hear?  " 

Harold  ^looked  at  his  companion  with  dazed 
eyes. 

"  How?  "  he  asked  blankly.  "  We're  wiped  out. 
I'll  do  anything  in  the  world.  But  how?  " 

"  You've  got  to  get  money." 

"I  can't!" 


3i8      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Don't  tell  me  you  can't.  YouVe  got  to.  You've 
got  to  get  money  to-day— now — right  away.  I  don't 
know  how  you'll  get  it,  and  I  don't  care.  That's 
your  business.  But  you've  got  to  get  it,  and  you've 
got  to  go  to  that  bucket-shop  that  we  played  in,  or 
else  to  a  roulette-table,  and  you've  got  to  play  all  day. 
And  you've  got  to  win !  " 

"  But  Dan " 

"  Shut  up,  I  tell  you!  "  Dan's  face  was  purple; 
his  eyes  blazed.  "  This  is  our  last  chance.  Get  the 
money.  Beg  it.  Borrow  it.  Steal  it.  Go  home 
and  pinch  your  father's  check-book  and  forge  a  check. 
Go  home  and  pawn  your  mother's  jewels.  I  don't 
care  what  you  do ;  but  I  won't  let  what  you  have  done 
send  me  to  jail!  I  won't  go  to  jail:  do  you  under- 
stand?" His  other  hand  descended  on  Harold's 
other  shoulder.  He  shook  the  younger  Richardson 
as  a  dog  shakes  a  cat.  "  Get  the  money,"  he  almost 
yelled;  "  and  win — win — win!  " 

With  a  final  push,  he  sent  Harold  spinning  over 
the  curb.  Dan  plunged  into  the  office. 

§  3.  How  he  got  through  the  day  he  did  not 
know  and  did  not  greatly  care.  He  had  small  hope 
of  any  help  from  Harold;  he  had  merely  followed 
one  mad  action  by  another.  Each  minute  he  expected 
the  sword  to  fall,  and  each  minute  was  prolonged  to 
infinity. 

Then,  just  as  the  market  closed,  a  messenger-boy 
hurried  into  the  office. 

"  Mr.  Daniel  Barnes !  "  he  called.  "  Mr.  Daniel 
W.  Barnes!" 

Dan  started  as  the  guilty  prisoner  starts  when  the 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      319 

clerk  of  the  court  shouts  his  name  and  calls  him  to 
the  bar  to  plead. 

Somebody  pointed  out  Dan  to  the  messenger. 

"  Don't  you  know  your  own  name,  Barnes?  "  asked 
this  somebody. 

The  messenger-boy  handed  Dan  a  long  envelope. 
It  had  been  addressed  by  a  blunt  pencil  in  Harold's 
hurried  hand. 

Dan  tore  it  open  and  drew  out  a  scribbled  note. 
He  read : 

UDEAR  DAN: — I've  done  it.  Never  again;  but 
I've  done  it  this  once  and  I've  won.  What  I  stooped 
to  I  can't  bear  to  tell.  I've  played  like  the  original 
man  that  broke  the  bank  at  Monte.  Don't  ask  me 
how.  I  don't  know.  I'm  dizzy.  All  I  know  is  that 
I'm  in  enough  to  pay  all  my  debts  contracted  for 
buying  votes  that  didn't  elect,  and  to  buy  enough  more 
to  elect  me  next  time. 

"  Yrs, 

"  H.  RICHARDSON." 

"  Don't  forget  to  buy  Penna.  I'll  cop  both  your 
phoney  checks  when  it  comes  back  to  the  gov.  from 
the  bank." 

Inclosed  was  Dan's  share :  its  size  sufficient  not  only 
to  cover  Dan's  defalcation  and  pay  his  debts,  but  to 
leave  him  with  a  comfortable  surplus. 

He  could  not  at  once  realize  it.  He  sat  for  a 
full  minut€  staring  at  the  paper  that  meant  liberty. 
Finally  he  staggered  to  the  telephone.  He  called 
Van  Voorne  &  Co. 

"  I  will  be  at  your  office  at  eleven  o'clock  to-morrow 
morning  with  the  money,"  he  said. 


320      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

He  called  Twigg. 

"  Send  around  here  at  noon  to-morrow  and  have 
your  bill  paid,"  he  ordered. 

He  called  Cora. 

"  It's  all  right,"  he  told  her.  "  I've  made  good, 
and  I  have  a  wad  on  the  safe  side." 

And  Cora  answered: 

"  I'm  glad.  I  knew  you  would  be  all  right. 
Didn't  I  tell  you  so?  Come  up  and  see  me  to-morrow 
evening,  sure.  I'm  busy  to-night." 

Then  Dan  wrote  a  letter  ordering  the  Pennsylvania 
stock  through  another  broker.  This  done,  he  re- 
read Harold's  note.  He  was  about  to  destroy  it, 
but  that  seemed  almost  sacrilege,  and  so  he  filed  it 
carefully  among  his  most  sacred  effects. 

He  went  into  the  street,  when  the  office  had  closed, 
singing  to  himself. 

"O,  my  God,"  he  whispered,  "I  thank  thee;  I 
thank  thee;  I  thank  thee!  " 

He  believed  again  in  God. 

He  believed  also  in  himself.  He  had  come  out 
all  right.  He  and  Harold  would  never  have  failed 
had  he  sold  Suburban  Traction  when  he  wanted  to 
sell  it,  and  they  would  never  have  been  saved  had 
Dan  not  assumed  command  and  issued  his  orders. 
Now  he  had  won.  He  had  played  the  game  that  was 
played  by  successful  men.  He  would  go  ahead.  He 
would  go  far.  He  would  become  one  of  those  who 
were  building  the  Greater  America. 

The  roar  of  New  York  was  like  organ-music  in 
his  ears.  He  strode  up  Broadway  full  of  people 
surging  home  from  work,  and  saw  in  them  the  great 
material  out  of  which  the  kind  of  men  that  he  was 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      321 

to  be  were  shaping  their  dream  into  a  reality.  He 
looked  at  the  towering  buildings  and  read  them  as 
symbols  of  the  master-minds  that  ruled  the  industries 
of  the  nation.  He  loved  New  York.  He  loved 
Broadway.  He  loved  life  and  power. 

That  night  he  slept  as  he  used  to  sleep  when  he 
was  a  child  in  Americus.  The  sleep  of  the  just  may 
indeed  be  sweet,  but  none  sleeps  so  soundly  as  the 
unjust  man  that  has  won. 


XX 


WITHIN  the  week,  Dan  had  acquired  the 
habit  of  prosperity.  He  paid  his  debts, 
made  sure  that  he  had  concealed  his  de- 
falcation, bought  new  clothes.  Cora  he  saw  as 
formerly,  but  he  did  not  waste  his  money;  and  he 
began  what  grew  into  a  long  series  of  calls  upon 
Judith.  Often,  for  she  worked  by  day,  he  took  her 
to  the  theater;  and  once,  when  with  her,  they  passed 
Cora,  who  bowed,  but  who  did  not  mention  the  meet- 
ing when  she  next  saw  him,  and  whom  Judith  did  not 
appear  to  observe. 

He  was  growing  steadily  fonder  of  Judith,  the 
more,  perhaps,  because  he  did  not  wholly  understand 
her.  Whither  her  theories  of  life  led  he  did  not 
know;  he  knew,  in  fact,  only  that  they  might  lead  to 
something  or  other  of  which  he  would  thoroughly  dis- 
approve; but  he  did  not  believe  that  Judith  or  any 
other  woman  could  follow  theories  to  a  logical  con- 
clusion. Meantime,  he  rather  liked  the  little  shocks 
that  her  frank  conversation  gave  him;  decidedly  en- 
joyed their  intellectual  stimulus,  and  began  dimly  to 
feel  that  he  might  find  in  some  turn  of  her  mental 
attitude  an  excuse  for  his  own  conduct  of  life. 

Early  on  the  bright  Sunday  morning  following 
election  the  two  were  walking  out  Broadway.  The 
twisting  street  had  assumed  its  sabbatic  quiet,  inno- 
cent seeming,  sunning  itself,  after  its  Saturday  night 

322 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      323 

of  revel,  like  a  gorged  snake  in  the  morning  glow; 
and  Judith,  straight,  with  her  dusky  cheek  touched  by 
the  keen  air  from  the  Sound,  was  again,  apropos  of 
some  casual  remark  by  Dan,  flaying  those  conventions 
which  were  devised  in  the  belief  that  a  world  of  dif- 
ferent individuals  could  act  as  some  few  of  them 
thought  it  ought  to. 

"  And  so,"  she  said,  "  our  system  shapes  even  our 
morals;  and  so  many  of  us  that  could  be  of  use  to  the 
rest  are  wasted,  and  the  best  of  us  are  only  at  their 
second-best." 

"  At  any  rate,"  Dan  threw  in,  "  there's  nothing 
halfway  about  you." 

"  At  any  rate,"  she  took  him  up,  "  I  am  not  that 
abomination  of  desolation,  a  compromising  radical." 

She  went  on  with  her  attack.  The  most  impor- 
tant asset  of  the  State,  she  said,  is  its  citizens,  and 
yet  the  State  breeds  its  citizens  in  ignorance  through 
economic  oppression.  We  boast  that  we  are  all  ad- 
vancing, yet  we  resolutely  shut  the  door  upon  all 
proposals  to  change  our  moral  attitude. 

"  Still,"  said  Dan,  "  children  can't  be  innocent  if 
they  know  too  much  too  soon." 

Judith's  dark  eyes  sparkled. 

"  Ignorance,"  she  affirmed,  "  has  about  as  much 
relation  to  innocence  as  the  cold  moon  has  to  the  red 
sun.  Ignorance  is  negative,  and  the  only  real  inno- 
cence is  intensely  positive.  Don't  you  think  there  is 
really  a  difference  between  a  saint  and  a  prig?  " 

"  But  there's  such  a  thing  as  a  middle  course,"  pro- 
tested Dan.  "  We've  got  to  protect  women.  All 
women  aren't  like  you,  you  know.  We've  got  to 
keep  them  away  from  the  world." 


324      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Nonsense/'  she  answered.  "  That  ideal  of  vir- 
tue isn't  an  ideal  of  virtue  at  all:  it  is  just  senility. 
In  effect  you  say:  *  If  we  men  weren't  to  demand  that 
our  women  be  pure,  they  would  be  impure.'  You 
haven't  much  faith  in  your  mother's  sex,  have 
you?" 

Dan's  cheeks  became  dully  red. 

1  You  don't  understand  the  world,"  he  said  dog- 
gedly. 

"  I  understand  that  there  is  nothing  right  for  man 
that  isn't  right  for  woman,"  said  Judith.  "  If  one 
is  free,  why  shouldn't  the  other  be  free  too?  " 

"  But  all  that  would  do  away  with  marriage !  " 

"  I  don't  believe  it  would  do  away  with  any  mar- 
riages except  false  and  blasphemous  marriages.  But 
what  if  it  does?  Haven't  we  done  away  with  feudal- 
ism, with  the  masks  of  the  Greek  drama,  with  negro 
slavery,  and  wandering  minstrels  and  epic  poetry — 
with  a  thousand  other  beautiful  and  ugly  and  good 
and  evil  things  ?  "  Her  head  was  thrown  back  de- 
fiantly. "  The  world's  coming  of  age,"  she  added. 
"  It  won't  do  much  longer  to  be  merely  dull,  and  it 
won't  do  to  be  merely  witty.  Art  for  art's  sake  and 
virtue  for  the  sake  of  one's  own  soul  are  both  fashions 
of  the  past." 

Failing  to  follow  her,  he  made,  man-like,  personal 
application. 

"  Come  now,"  he  said;  "  take  your  own  case.  If 
you  were  in  love  with  a  man,  wouldn't  you  want  him 
to  think  you  were  better  than  he  was?  Tell  the 
truth  and  shame  the  devil." 

"  You  mean:  tell  the  truth  and  shame  the  respect- 
able," said  Judith,  calmly.  "  If  I  married  a  man,  I 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      325 

should  want  him  to  know  that  I  had  every  liberty 
that  he  had  and  not  one  liberty  more." 

Dan  looked  at  her  with  a  sidelong  glance.  He 
thought  that  he  had  rarely  seen  her  more  beautiful. 

"  Theoretically,"  he  said,  "  you're  right,  you  know; 
and  still- 

"  Still,"  she  took  him  up,  "  you  wonder  how  it 
happens  that  I  am.  I  dare  say." 

§  2.  He  passed  the  entire  morning  with  her  and 
the  evening  with  Cora. 

Then,  just  as  he  was  becoming  satisfied  with  life, 
he  found  that  he  was  once  more  in  the  clutches  of 
that  illness  which  had  handed  him  over  to  Twigg. 
Again  he  waited  to  be  sure,  but  this  time  he  waited 
for  only  a  day.  His  anger  went  out  against  Cora. 
It  never  occurred  to  him  that  what  he  suffered  might 
be  but  a  recurrence.  He  hurried  from  his  office  to 
her  flat. 

u  Well,"  he  said,  "  you're  a  nice  woman,  aren't 
you?" 

She  had  come  out  from  the  bedroom  into  her  little 
parlor.  She  was  dressing  for  the  evening,  but  had 
got  no  farther  than  her  corset  and  petticoat.  Her 
yellow  hair  was  still  tumbled  from  her  day  of  sleep, 
and  the  pencil  had  not  yet  been  applied  to  her  pale 
eyebrows. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  you?"  she  asked,  her 
hands  behind  her  back,  busy  with  corset-strings. 

Dan  eyed  her  with  repulsion. 

"  You  know  well  enough  what's  the  matter  with 
me,"  he  said. 

"  You'd  keep  me  too  busy,  Danny,  if  I  tried  to 


326      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

guess  all  your  troubles.    Been  tapping  the  till  again?  " 

He  gripped  the  back  of  one  of  the  gilt  chairs. 
He  had  to  grip  it  to  keep  his  hands  from  her  throat. 

"  No,"  he  said;  ''that's  not  necessary.  I'm  not 
letting  you  bleed  me  the  way  you  used  to.  You 
ought  to  know  what's  wrong;  you  gave  it  to  me." 

Instantly  her  head  came  forward.  Her  brows 
drew  togitfher.  Her  hard  eyes  narrowed,  and  her 
mouth  tightened  to  a  drooping  semi-circle. 

"  Oh,  it  was  you !  "  she  said.  "  I  never  guessed  it. 
I  never  guessed  it!  Yes,  I've  got  it,  and  you  gave 
it  to  me,  and  now  you've  got  the  nerve  to  come  here 
and  say  I  gave  it  to  you !  Me !  It  was  that  skirt 
I  saw  you  taking  to  the  theater  the  other  night !  " 

Her  voice  rose  to  a  shriek.  She  advanced,  her 
hands  clenched  at  her  sides.  She  loosed  all  the  vile 
thoughts  that  her  life  had  bred  in  her,  all  the  filthy 
epithets  that  her  trade  had  taught.  She  spat  them 
at  him.  She  poured  out  oaths  and  accusations  until 
Dan  staggered  before  them.  It  was  as  if  a  sewer- 
pipe  had  burst  and  deluged  him. 

"  You  get  out  of  here !  "  she  ordered,  her  bare 
arm  pointing  to  the  door.  Her  face  was  hideous. 

Dan  opened  the  door.  To  himself  he  still  accused 
her,  but,  as  she  revealed  herself,  he  no  longer  cared 
enough  about  her  to  attempt  further  recrimination. 
Her  outburst  and  what  it  revealed  made  him  almost 
calm. 

"  All  right,"  he  said,  "  I'm  going." 

"  And  never  dare  come  back!  "  she  shouted. 

She  followed  him  upon  the  landing.  As  he  de- 
scended, she  leaned  over  the  baluster  and  continued 
to  gush  corruption. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      327 

"  Do  you  know  what  you've  been  to  me?  I'll  tell 
you!  I'll  tell  you!  ..." 

§  3.  It  all  came  and  went  like  a  lightning-flash 
in  a  midnight  storm.  He  seemed  scarcely  to  have 
entered  Cora's  flat  before  he  was  again  on  the  street, 
this  time  with  burning  face.  He  hurried  as  if  he 
were  pursued.  Yet  he  knew  that  one  chapter  of  his 
life  was  closed  forever;  and  of  that  he  was  glad. 

His  mistakes  had  taught  him  something.  He  put 
himself  in  the  hands  of  a  reputable  physician 
that  promised  a  cure  and  did  at  last  effect  one; 
but  in  the  meantime  the  patient  suffered  all  the  mental 
reaction  symptomatic  of  his  illness.  He  hated  Cora 
and  feared  her,  much  as  he  had  once  feared  and 
hated  Irma.  From  this  he  came  to  the  point  where 
the  conscience  inculcated  in  his  youth  revived  to  tor- 
ture him,  and  thence  he  passed  to  the  need  of  some 
theory  of  self-justification. 

He  must  give  it  up,  this  life  of  dirtiness.  He 
passionately  wanted  to  give  it  up.  There  was  no 
romance  about  it.  You  could  in  no  wise  approach 
it  without,  sooner  or  later,  being  soiled.  Dan 
wanted  romance.  He  had  gone  his  predestined  way 
into  the  depths  of  life;  his  predestined  way  now 
headed  toward  life's  summits.  He  needed  woman, 
but  he  wanted  that  type  of  woman  which  he  con- 
sidered the  true  woman,  and  he  needed  exculpation 
in  her  eyes  and  his  own.  He  wanted  the  clean,  and 
he  wanted  to  know  that  he  was  not  irretrievably 
smirched.  Limited  as  was  his  imagination,  with  all 
his  heart  he  wanted  to  find  something  that  would 
explain  his  conduct;  that  would  forgive  it  as,  if  not 


328      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

right,  at  least  not  viciously  wrong;  that  would  lift 
him  to  a  mental  attitude  from  which  he  might,  with- 
out shame,  love  and  be  loved  by  a  woman  pure  in 
body  and  in  mind. 

This  needed  justification  he  found  in  a  further 
misunderstanding  of  Judith's  point  of  view  and  a 
hasty  advocacy  of  the  spurious  version.  It  was 
simple  enough.  It  was,  indeed,  nothing  but  the 
ancient  statement  that  boys  will  be  boys,  that  young 
men  have  to  sow  a  certain  quantity  of  wild  oats, 
and  that,  therefore,  what  becomes  wrong  with  matur- 
ity is  at  least  natural  to  youth. 

He  thus  stated  it  to  Judith  when,  one  evening,  they 
were  dining  at  the  restaurant  to  which  he  used  to 
take  Cora. 

"  Scarcely  that,"  said  Judith.  "  I  mean  that  under 
the  present  form  of  society,  with  low  wages  making 
a  regular  relation  more  and  more  of  a  luxury,  irregu- 
lar relations,  casual  relations,  are  necessarily  becom- 
ing more  and  more  of  a  commonplace." 

To  Dan,  however,  this  sounded  like  assent.  He 
did  not  discern  between  the  statement  of  a  truth  and 
an  argument  for  its  vindication. 

"  People,"  said  he,  "  just  make  a  mountain  out 
of  a  molehill." 

"  People,"  said  Judith,  "  as  certainly  exaggerate  the 
importance  of  the  relation  as  they  underestimate  the 
importance  of  the  duties  that  often  spring  from  it." 

She  found  herself  liking  Dan  better  every  time 
she  saw  him.  She  came,  of  course,  no  closer  to  an 
understanding  of  him  than  he  came  to  an  understand- 
ing of  her;  but  he  was  easy  to  talk  to  and  good  to 
look  at.  She  remembered  much  of  their  childhood 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      329 

acquaintance  that  he  seemed  to  her  to  have  forgotten, 
and  she  was  lonely. 

"  I  don't  know,"  Dan  was  saying,  with  a  shake  of 
his  round  head;  "about  the  hardest  thing  in  the 
world  to  do  is  your  duty." 

But  Judith  would  not  quite  agree  to  that. 

''  There  is  nothing  hard  about  doing  your  duty," 
said  she.  "Anybody  can  do  his  duty,  once  it's  plain 
to  him;  but  the  supreme  riddle  of  life  is  that  duty 
never  is  plain.  If  you  do  right  to  A,  you  do  wrong 
to  B ;  and  if  you  raise  up  B,  you  tread  down  A.  The 
man  that  talks  of  Right  and  Wrong  as  he  talks  of 
black  and  white  is  a  man  that  simply  has  a  blunted 
ethical  sense." 

Leaving  the  restaurant,  they  passed  Dr.  Twigg 
and  Lysander  Fry  in  the  act  of  entering.  The 
former  brushed  by  with  a  brief  nod;  but  Fry  hesi- 
tated for  a  moment  before  proceeding,  much  as  if 
he  wanted  to  stop  and  talk. 

"Who  was  that?"  said  Judith,  when  she  had 
reached  the  pavement.  ."  I  mean  the  man  in  the 
fur  coat." 

"Don't  you  know?"  replied  Dan.  "That's  an 
Americus  boy." 

"  I  thought  I  had  seen  him  before,  but  I  wasn't 
sure.  Who  is  he?  " 

"  Lysander  Fry — *  Snagsie,'  you  know.  I  told  you 
about  him  when  I  met  you  at  the  club  that  night." 

Judith  hesitated  a  moment,  frowning;  then  she 
seemed  to  recollect. 

"  Oh,  yes!  You  said  that  he  had  *  a  good  thing 
of  it.'  He  looks  as  if  that  were  true.  How  does 
he  make  a  living?  " 


330      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  I  don't  know  how,"  said  Dan,  "  and  I  certainly 
don't  know  why."  He  had  not  yet  forgiven  his 
friend  for  that  bad  advice  in  the  matter  of  Suburban 
Traction.  "  Still,"  he  continued,  with  a  flash  of  jus- 
tice, "  Fry  seems  to  understand  what  he  wants  an3 
gets  it." 

They  had  turned  into  a  cross-street.  The  night 
was  clear,  not  cold,  and,  in  the  rift  of  sky  between 
the  roofs,  there  shone  a  handful  of  white 
stars. 

"  Do  you  understand  what  you  want?"  asked 
Judith. 

For  the  first  time  in  his  life,  Dan  found  himself 
uncertain  as  to  what  he  wanted.  His  theft,  his 
danger,  his  bare  escape,  the  brief  period  of  content- 
ment that  had  followed,  the  illness,  and  Cora's  dread- 
ful revelation  of  the  true  character  of  those  condi- 
tions that  he  had,  unguessing,  touched  in  his  relations 
with  her:  all  these  things  had  left  him  wavering  and 
perplexed;  and  to-night  the  woman  beside  him,  beauti- 
ful and  calm,  offering  as  it  seemed  a  means  of  vin- 
dication, had  turned  his  thoughts  in  a  direction  in 
which  they  had  not  moved  for  years. 

"  I  don't  know,"  he  said.  "  Sometimes  I  think  I 
do,  and  then  sometimes  I  think  I'm  all  wrong." 
They  were  passing  beneath  an  electric  lamp.  Dan 
looked  at  Judith  and  saw  that  her  eyes  were  lowered, 
and  noticed  how  the  soft,  chestnut  hair  curled  about 
her  temples.  To  his  own  amazement  he  found  him- 
self going  on:  "I  used  to  think  a  little  about  even 
getting  married;  but  I  guess  I  was  a  fool." 

Her  reply  amazed  him  even  more. 

"  I  suppose  you  were,"  she  said. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      331 

"Eh?"  said  Dan. 

She  laughed  a  little. 

"  I  mean  that,"  she  went  on,  "  you  want  to  be 
powerful ;  and  so  far  as  those  in  power  are  concerned, 
love  has  gone  out  of  the  world." 

He  was  annoyed  by  this,  and  yet,  under  his 
annoyance,  there  struggled  a  desire  for  the  comfort 
and  peace  that,  he  thought  suddenly,  this  woman 
might  give  him.  He  wondered  whether  he  could 
not  reconcile  his  life  with  his  ideals,  and  whether  such 
a  heart  as  Judith's  could  not  help  him  to  accomplish 
such  a  reconciliation.  But  his  mood  would  not  yet 
betray  itself. 

"  People  still  get  married,"  he  teased. 

"  Yes,"  said  she,  "  people  still  marry;  but  I  wasn't 
talking  about  marriage:  I  was  talking  about  love. 
If  they  love  at  all,  most  married  people  don't  pass 
their  time  loving  each  other;  they  pass  it  loving  the 
thing  that  each  thinks  the  other  is — in  that  and  in 
holding  the  pose  that  each  knows  the  other  wants 
to  believe  in." 

This  struck  Dan  as  a  revelation. 

"  That's  right,"  he  assented.  "  And  that  sort  of 
thing's  not  real  love,  is  it?  " 

She  was  still  looking  down. 

"  No,"  she  said. 

"  It'd  be  wonderful,"  pursued  Dan,  his  voice  grow- 
ing tender,  "  to  have  a  fine  woman  understand  you 
and  yet  cafe  for  you;  it  would  make  you  sure  you 
were  worth  something.  Real  love  must  be  knowing 
all  about  a  fellow  and  liking  him  anyhow." 

His  words  were  unconsciously  pathetic ;  they  were, 
like  so  much  that  Judith  had  just  said,  but  echoes 


332      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

from  one  or  other  of  their  previous  talks.  Judith 
confined  her  reply  to  the  matter-of-fact. 

"  That  is  the  whole  trouble  with  modern  mar- 
riage,'7 she  said;  "the  man  thinks  that  the  woman 
must  have  been  his  property  from  her  birth  and  must 
stay  so  till  her  death;  and  the  woman  thinks  that 
the  man  must  at  least  tell  her  every  detail  of  all  that 
he  has  ever  done,  that  he  must  give  her  his  memories 
as  well  as  his  heart.  Well,  that  can't  be  done.  A 
perfect  understanding  is  necessary  to  a  real  marriage, 
but  all  the  details  aren't  necessary  to  a  perfect  under- 
standing. Simply  because  they  mean  to  live  together 
is  no  excuse  for  a  man  and  woman  to  invade  each 
other's  personality." 

They  walked  on  in  silence  until  they  had  reached 
the  door  of  the  house  in  which  Judith  lodged,  and 
there  Dan  turned  to  leave  her.  He  raised  his  hat 
and  put  out  his  hand. 

"  Good-night,"  he  said. 

Her  hand  descended  upon  his  like  a  snow-flake. 

"  Good-night,"  said  she. 

"  I  don't  see,"  thought  Dan  as  he  walked  away, 
'  Why  two  people  can't  be  in  love,  why  two  people 
can't  even  be  married,  and  just  be  themselves  to  each 
other." 

§  4.  He  was  still  thinking  this,  was  still  among 
the  clouds,  when,  next  morning,  one  of  the  clerks 
came  to  him. 

"  Boss  wants  to  see  you,"  said  the  clerk. 

"  Which  boss?"  asked  D'an.     "O'Neill?" 

"  No,  Silverstone.  He  wants  to  see  you  in  his 
office." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      333 

"  What  about?" 

"  How  do  I  know?  Old  Giddey's  still  sick. 
They  say  he  never  will  be  back.  Perhaps  you're 
going  to  get  his  job." 

"  Not  from  Silverstone,"  said  Dan,  with  his  half 
shrug.  "  Not  from  that  dirty  Jew.  He's  got  a 
piece  of  flint  for  a  heart.  He'd  never  do  anything 
decent  for  anybody." 

"'Well,  someone'll  have  to  get  the  job  if  Giddey 
makes  a  die  of  it,"  said  the  clerk,  smiling. 

Dan's  dislike  for  the  junior  partner  had  not 
abated  since  Silverstone  last  refused  his  employee's 
request  for  an  increased  wage.  It  was  impossible 
that  Silverstone  should  have  chosen  Dan  to  succeed 
Giddey.  What  did  the  fellow  want,  anyhow?  Dan 
entered  the  private  office  with  his  sullen  prejudice 
smoldering. 

§  5.  Silverstone  was  seated  at  his  roll-top  desk,  his 
legs  crossed,  and  some  papers  in  his  hand.  A  cigar 
that  he  had  been  smoking  lay  in  a  brass  tray  before 
him,  sending  up  a  spiral  of  gray  smoke. 

"  Good-morning,"  said  Silverstone,  impassively. 

Dan  noticed  that  the  dark  face  bore  no  smile. 

"  Good-morning,"  said  Dan. 

"  Sit  down,"  Silverstone  continued. 

He  indicated  a  chair  beside  the  desk,  and  Dan 
took  it  and  faced  the  man  that  had  sent  for 
him. 

"  Some  time  ago,"  said  Silverstone,  speaking  in 
his  slow,  unaccented  manner,  "  you  asked  me  to  raise 
your  salary." 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Dan,  his  wide  eyes  lifted  hope- 


334      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

fully.  Could  it  be  that  the  Jew  was  relenting  to- 
ward him? 

"  I  told  you,"  pursued  Silverstone,  "  that  I  was 
dissatisfied  with  your  work." 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  I  have  seen  nothing  since  then,  Mr.  Barnes,  to 
change  my  opinion." 

So  that  was  it !  There  was  to  be  a  dismissal ! 
Dan  knew  that  he  could  get  a  similar  position  in  some 
neighboring  office  at  the  same  wage.  That  knowl- 
edge robbed  him  of  fear.  He  bridled  accordingly. 

"  It  doesn't  make  any  difference  to  me  whether 
you  have  or  not,"  he  lied:  "  I  can  get  a  better  salary 
from  Haviland  &  Tansey  this  afternoon  if  I  want 
it." 

"  No,"  Silverstone  shook  his  handsome  head. 
"  You  couldn't  do  that." 

"  At  just  as  much  then,"  declared  Dan,  his  voice 
assuming  the  teasing  timbre  that  always  controlled  it 
when  he  was  anxious  or  excited.  "  How  do  you 
know,  Mr.  Silverstone  ?  Have  you  asked  them  ?  " 

"I  have  not,"  said  Silverstone;  u  but  I  could  not 
let  you  go  there.  My  duty  to  them  would  prevent 
me  from  letting  you  go  there." 

His  duty  to  a  rival  firm !     Dan  could  have  laughed. 

"  How  could  you  stop  me?  "  he  inquired,  embold- 
ened by  his  recent  prosperity. 

"  I  should  have  to  stop  you,"  said  Silverstone, 
quietly.  "  They  would  ask  me  about  you,  and  I 
should  have  to  tell  them  what  I  have  discovered." 

Dan  had  been  leaning  forward  with  a  defensive 
glow  of  anger  in  his  face,  but  as  his  employer  ended, 
the  employee  sank  back  in  his  chair. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      335 

"How — what  do  you  mean?"  he  asked,  his  lips 
quivering. 

"  I  mean  that  you  have  embezzled  money,"  said 
Silverstone. 

Dan  sprang  to  his  feet. 

"It's  a  lie !"  he  cried. 

"  It  is  the  truth,"  said  Silverstone. 

Sweat  came  out  upon  Dan's  forehead. 

"  I  won't  stand  for  this !  "  he  declared.  He  made 
for  the  door. 

'  Where  are  you  going?  "  asked  his  employer. 

"  Away — I'm  going  to  clear  out.  I  won't  stay 
here  and  hear  you  call  me  a  thief!  " 

"  I  should  not  advise  you  to  go  just  yet,"  said 
Silverstone,  calmly.  "  Mr.  O'Neill  is  in  the  outer 
office  by  this  time,  and  he  wants  to  have  you  arrested." 

Dan  came  to  a  quick  stop.  He  faced  about.  It 
was  all  over,  then !  Fear  of  the  verdict,  and  hatred 
of  the  accuser  made  him  physically  weak.  He  leaned 
for  support  against  the  table  that  stood  in  the  center 
of  the  room,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  gray  spiral  of 
smoke  from  Silverstone's  neglected  cigar. 

"Where  did  you  hear  that?"  he  gasped.  "I 
don't  owe  anybody  a  dollar!  " 

Silverstone  compressed  his  lips. 

"It  was  that  spy  Giddey!"  Dan  continued,  the 
last  rags  of  discretion  dropping  from  him.  "  He 
guessed  it!  " 

"It  was- not  Mr.  Giddey,"  said  Silverstone,  who 
was  a  marvelous  diagnostician  of  moral  maladies. 
"  You  know  that  he  has  been  ill.  I  found  it  out 
because  no  man  in  his  senses  could  help  but  find  it 
.out.  Mr.  Richardson  came  to  see  me  on  other 


336      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

business.  He  happened  to  mention  a  transaction, 
through  us,  in  P.  R.  R.  He  said  he  had  got 
the  stock  from  you  the  other  day,  and  quite  unsus- 
piciously added  that  the  canceled  check  for  it  was 
missing  from  those  returned  to  him  from  the  bank. 
I  asked  the  date.  Later  I  saw  that  the  transaction 
did  not  appear  on  our  books.  I  surmised  the  rest, 
and  now  you  have  confirmed  my  surmise." 

Dan  bit  his  lip.  He  realized  that  he  had  been 
trapped;  and  dislike  was  fanned  into  a  flame  that 
was  quenched  only  by  terror  for  the  result  of  the 
offense. 

"  I— I— I "  he  stammered. 

"  So  you  see/'  said  Silverstone,  "  that  I  could  not 
let  you  go  into  a  position  of  trust  with  Haviland  & 
Tansey." 

Terror  triumphed:  Dan  put  his  wet  palms  to  his 
wet  face. 

"  You  must  know  it  was  paid  back,"  he  said.  "  I 
only  borrowed  it." 

"  Borrowed  it?  I  never  knew  an  embezzler  that 
did  anything  else,"  said  Silverstone. 

A  cry  burst  from  Dan.  It  was  not  articulate;  it 
was  only  the  anguish  of  the  trapped  and  wounded 
animal  made  vocal. 

"  Wait  a  moment,"  said  Silverstone.  "  Sit  down 
again." 

"  I  can't !  "  Dan  uncovered  his  face,  bloated  with 
tears.  "  Don't  you  see  I  can't?  What  are  you  go- 
ing to  do?"  He  put  his  clenched  hands  together. 
"  Oh,  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  me?  " 

"  Wait  a  moment,"  said  Silverstone  again. 

His  voice  was  still  even.     But,  though  he  spoke 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      337 

quietly  he  now  spoke  with  his  habitual  play  of  gesture. 

"  Years  ago,"  he  began,  "  I  knew  a  little  Jewish 
boy  that  came  over  to  this  country  from  the  ghetto 
of  Mayence.  He  was  very  poor.  His  old  father 
and  mother  were  so  poor  that  they  had  to  stay  in 
Mayence,  and  every  week  the  boy  sent  them  half  of 
his  wages.  He  worked  in  a  kosher  butcher-shop 
near  Houston  Street.  Once  he  did  a  big  piece  of 
work  outside  and  was  promised  money  for  it,  and 
every  two  weeks  the  man  that  he  did  that  work  for 
paid  him  five  dollars." 

Silverstone  bent  forward. 

'  Then  one  day,"  he  continued,  "  the  boy  got  word 
that  his  father  was  very  ill  and  needed  treatment  that 
he  could  not  pay  for.  The  boy  had  saved  all  but  a 
few  dollars  of  the  sum  named,  but  he  knew  that  his 
father  would  not  have  asked  for  one  cent  more  than 
was  absolutely  necessary.  The  boy  tried  to  borrow 
from  his  friends,  but  his  friends  were  as  poor  as  he 
was.  He  tried  to  borrow  from  his  employer,  but 
his  employer  would  not  lend  the  money.  So  the  boy 
said  to  himself :  '  I  will  take  this  money  from  the 
store.  Nobody  will  know.  Besides,  the  other  money 
that  is  owed  me  will  surely  soon  be  paid,  and  then  I 
will  pay  back  the  butcher  that  I  work  for.'  So  he 
took  the  money. — But  the  other  man  did  not  pay 
him  as  he  expected,  and  then  the  boy  saw  that  he 
was  really  a  thief." 

Silverstone  stood  up.     He  advanced  to  Dan. 

"  The  employer  detected  the  theft,"  said  Silver- 
stone,  "  and  had  the  boy  arrested  and  sent  to  jail. 
By  just  a  miracle,  the  boy  did  not  come  out  of  jail 
worse  than  he  went  in.  He  came  out  safe,  and,  in 


338      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

spite  of  the  jail,  he  had  learned  a  lesson  that  he  has 
never  forgotten.  From  that  day  to  this  he  has  never 
touched  a  cent  that  was  not  his  own.  But  he  has 
always  remembered  one  thing :  he  has  always  remem- 
bered how  easy  it  is  to  go  wrong  and  how  hard  it  is 
afterwards  to  make  anybody  believe  that  you  will 
never  go  wrong  again." 

The  employer's  hands  took  hold  of  Dan's. 

"  Daniel,"  he  concluded,  "  that  little  boy's  name 
was  Clarence  Silverstone." 

A  great  sob  tore  Dan's  breast:  "the  flint-hearted 
Jew  "  had  forgiven  him. 


XXI 

THE  bourgeois  passes  his  days  in  overlooking 
dramatic  possibilities  and  in  avoiding  them 
when  they  obtrude  themselves.  Dan,  robbed 
for  the  time  of  all  intelligence,  felt  nothing  but  grati- 
tude and.  relief;  all  that  he  could  say  was  a 
choking  fragment  of  thanks;  all  that  he  could  think 
was:  "I  wanted  money  for  gambling:  Silverstone 
wanted  it  for  his  father;  yet  he  never  once 
asked  me  what  I  wanted  money  for,  and  he  has 
forgiven  me  1  "  Silverstone,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  a  straight  brain  though  a  narrow  one,  and 
went  directly  to  his  point:  O'Neill's  desire  for  a 
prosecution  should  be  overcome;  nobody,  not  even 
Mr.  Richardson,  should  be  told  of  the  embezzlement; 
the  guarantee  of  trustworthiness  necessary  to  Dan  if 
he  were  to  secure  employment  with  the  neighboring 
brokers  Silverstone  could  not  conscientiously  supply; 
but  he  was  willing  to  take  a  risk  that  he  was  loath 
to  ask  of  his  rivals,  and  so  he  would  persuade  O'Neill 
to  give  Dan  another  chance  in  his  former  position. 

There  Dan,  however,  gained  control  of  his  feelings 
and  achieved  a  new  degree  of  growth.  It  was  not 
only  that  he  wished  to  avoid  daily  acquaintance  with 
the  scene  of  his  fault;  it  was  even  not  only  that 
he  knew  that  his  fault,  being  discovered,  must  there 
fatally  retard  advancement;  it  was  also  that  he  was 
certain  that  he  should  ask  no  more  of  Silverstone 

339 


340      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

than  forgiveness  and  mercy.     He  would  leave  the 
office  at  once  and  shift  for  himself. 

That  was  the  arrangement  finally  effected.  Within 
half  an  hour  after  he  faced  the  junior  partner,  Dan 
had  ceased  to  be  an  employee  of  the  firm  of  O'Neill 
&  Silverstone. 

§  2.  Chastened  by  this  experience,  but  still,  at 
bottom,  encouraged  by  the  success  of  Harold's  plunge 
in  the  market,  and  sustained  by  the  memory  that  his 
own  wisdom  would  have  prevented  the  need  of  that 
plunge,  Dan  resolved  to  go  into  business  for  himself. 
A  former  fellow-employee  of  O'Neill  &  Silverstone's, 
the  clerk  indeed  with  the  loud  waistcoats,  had  recently 
approached  him  with  a  proposed  partnership  in  curb- 
operations,  and  of  this  Dan  began  now  seriously  to 
think.  More  capital  was,  however,  required  for  his 
share  than  he  possessed,  so  he  composed  a  letter  to 
his  father,  setting  forth  in  Dan's  most  brilliant  terms 
the  opportunity  offered,  and  asking  a  heavy  loan. 

The  recent  news  from  Americus  had  not  been  of 
a  character  further  to  frighten  Dan.  The  last  letter 
that  Mrs.  Barnes  had  sent  him  reported  that  Old  Tom 
was  thin  and  weak,  but  again  at  work.  Conse- 
quently, the  son  was  ready  with  condemnation  when 
he  received  from  his  father  a  brief  note  that  brusquely 
refused  the  advance. 

"  MY  DEAR  SON  [wrote  Tom]  : — Yours  to  hand 
and  am  sorry  to  say  that  business  has  not  been  very 
good  with  me  here  and  so  cannot  let  you  have  sum 
mentioned.  I  am  thinking  anyhow  that  it  might  be 
a  good  thing  now  if  you  took  hold  with  me  in  the 
old  store.  You  mind  I  used  always  to  say  sometime 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      341 

you  should.     I  am  thinking  you  would  better  come 
home  over  next  Sunday  and  talk  over  it. 
"  Your  aff.  father, 

"  THOMAS  L.  BARNES." 

Go  home !  Return  to  live  in  that  Sleepy  Hollow, 
Americus!  Dan  shrugged  his  right  shoulder  dis- 
dainfully. 

"  I'll  not  do  it!  "  he  vowed.  "  He's  just  holding 
back  the  money  so's  he  can  force  me  to  bury  myself 
in  that  crossroads  shop;  but  I  won't  let  him  work 
that  game  on  me.  I  won't  do  it!  " 

The  letter  had  reached  him  at  his  boarding-house, 
forwarded  from  O'Neill  &  Silverstone's  office.  He 
tore  into  small"  pieces  the  sheet  covered  with  uncer- 
tain writing,  and  went  forth  on  a  fruitless  errand  to 
find  Fry,  in  the  hope  of  interesting  that  business-man 
in  the  new  venture.  He  did  not  find  Fry,  and  when 
he  returned  to  the  boarding-house  for  dinner,  Dan 
was  handed  a  telegram: 

"  Father  very  sick.    Come  at  once.— MOTHER." 

Dan  took  a  night  train  home.  At  Doncaster  he 
changed  far  a  trolley-car,  and  at  one  o'clock  in  the 
morning  was  approaching  the  familiar  house  in  Oak 
Street. 

§3.  The  place  loomed  bulky  and  gray  under  a 
late  moon. ,-  Its  shutters  were  closed,  but  Dan  no- 
ticed one  dim  light  at  the  transom  over  the  front 
door  and  another  about  the  edges  of  the  drawn  blinds 
in  a  pair  of  the  second-story  front  windows,  the  win- 
dows to  his  parents'  bedroom.  He  closed  the  gate 


342      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

softly  and  went  up  the  brick-paved  walk  to  the  porch. 

He  was  strangely  moved.  Our  parents  have  been, 
from  our  beginning,  something  stable  in  our  exist- 
ence. They  are  always  there.  It  never  concretely 
occurs  to  our  imaginations  to  picture  their  change  or 
passage.  If  they  live,  we  carry  this  feeling  into  ma- 
turity; we  cannot  understand,  except  theoretically,  the 
possibility  of  their  death.  And  now  Dan  found  him- 
self looking  at  the  door  of  his  home  to  see  if  there 
were  crepe  upon  its  bell-knob. 

His  mother  met  him  in  the  hall  and  turned  up  the 
gas-jet  that  was  suspended  there. 

Dan  noticed  then  the  first  tokens  of  the  great 
transmutation.  Mrs.  Barnes  had  g/own  old.  Her 
hair,  still  neatly  parted,  was  much  thinner  and  more 
silvery  than  when  he  had  last  seen  it;  her  hands  were 
heavily  veined,  and  the  skin,  drawn  tightly  over  her 
prominent  cheek-bones,  was  delicately  aciculated.  But 
more  subtle,  yet  more  potent,  than  these  things, 
was  an  inner  change  that  disclosed  itself  no  less 
clearly;  it  shone  through  the  wide  blue  eyes,  faded, 
but  lacking  in  their  former  diffidence;  it  drew 
the  large  mouth  into  a  firm  line,  and  it  spoke  in 
the  accents  of  her  low  voice.  It  was  the  result  of 
sick-room  authority;  it  was  the  once  timid  forced  to 
become  a  ruler;  it  was  efficiency. 

"How  is  he?"  asked  Dan  as  he  kissed  the  soft 
cheek  presented  to  him. 

"  Very  low,"  said  his  mother.  She  stood  before 
him  with  her  hands  folded  at  her  waist.  "  It's  in- 
flammation of  the  lungs,  double  pneumonia;  an'  the 
doctor  says  something  about  complications."  She 
had  relapsed,  under  stress,  into  the  vernacular.. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      343 

"  But  I  thought  he  was  so  much  better."  Dan's 
tone  had  the  note  of  protest.  His  father  had  im- 
proved; had  been  stronger.  The  thing  was  unjust, 
it  was  absonant  to  reason. 

"  I  know,"  said  Mrs.  Barnes,  "  but  he  must  have 
gone  back  to  work  too  soon.  He  would  do  it.  You 
know  your  father." 

"  And  then?  "  Dan  prompted. 
'  Then  he  got  kind  of  bronchitis,  but  kep'  right 
on  at  the  store,  till  here  last  night,  after  he'd  been 
coughing  some,  we  had  hot-cakes  for  supper,  an*  he 
enjoyed  'em,  too;  but  he  took  a  terrible  chill.  He 
shook  all  over,  an'  said  he  had  pains  in  his  breast.  I 
put  him  right  to  bed,  but  he  got  feverish  an'  began 
to  breathe  quick  an'  queer,  so  I  sent  right  off  for  the 
doctor."  She  was  far  more  self-possessed  than 
Dan. 

"What  does  the  doctor  think?"  asked  Dan. 

"  Oh,  these  young  doctors !  This  one  wanted  I 
should  have  in  a  nurse,  but  I  said  no  I  guessed  I  could 
nurse  my  own  husband." 

"Yes;  but  what  does  he  think  about  the  case?" 

"  Who  ever  knows  what  a  doctor  thinks?  "  Mrs. 
Barnes  tightened  her  thin  fingers.  "  I  thought  maybe 
he  might  be  cupped;  but  this  new  doctor  says  no, 
that  it  isn't  done  any  more.  I  can't  help  wishing 
Dr.  Ireland  wasn't  dead,"  she  sighed. 

"  Well,  but,"  Dan  again  prodded  her,  "  he  must 
say  something  about  the  chances." 

Mrs.  Barnes  looked  hard  at  the  worn  hall-carpet. 

"  He  says  they  aren't  much,"  she  whispered. 

It  was  what  Dan  had  expected;  he  felt  that  it 
was  what  he  should  have  expected  since  he  received 


344      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

the  first  news  of  the  first  attack;  but  youth  was  still 
strong  in  him. 

"  Don't  take  his  word  for  it,"  urged  Dan.  "  Have 
you  sent  to  Philadelphia?  You  ought  to  send  to 
Philadelphia.  You  ought  to  have  a  consulta- 
tion." 

The  mother  raised  her  eyes,  and  her  eyes  told  Dan 
that  she  had  suggested  this,  and  that  the  doctor  said 
it  would  not  avail.  She  seemed  to  fear  that  a 
pause  for  sympathy  would  impair  her  usefulness. 
When  Dan  took  her  hand,  she  drew  it  away. 

"  Come  up  an'  see  him,"  she  said. 

"  I — is  he  well  enough?  "  asked  Dan. 

"  It  can't  hurt  him  now." 

"  Does  he  expect  me?  " 

"  He  wanted  I  should  send  for  you." 

"  And  he's  conscious?  " 

"  Yes,  he's  conscious.  We'd  better  go.  I  don't 
like  to  be  away  so  long." 

§  4.  The  big  bedroom  was  heavy  with  the  odors 
of  illness.  The  gas  overhead  was  shaded  by  a  paper 
screen,  so  that  what  light  there  was  should  not  annoy 
the  patient. 

Dan  made  out  a  little  table  on  which  stood  several 
labeled  bottles  with  spoons  beside  them.  He  did  not 
want  to  look  at  the  bed.  He  felt  that  he  could  not 
look  there;  that  what  he  would  see  was  something 
that  a  son  should  not  see.  The  silence  oppressed 
him,  and  then,  as  his  mother  noiselessly  tiptoed  in 
the  direction  in  which  he  would  not  look,  he  was 
aware  that  the  silence  was  being  regularly  broken 
by  a  labored  sound.  It  was  a  terrifying  sound.  It 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      345 

made  him  shiver,  because  it  was  the  sound  of  a 
breath  agonizingly  drawn  into  choked  lungs. 

"  Tom,"  said  Mrs.  Barnes.     "  Father,  dear." 

Dan  heard  no  answer,  but  answer  of  some  sort 
there  must  have  been,  for  she  went  on : 

"  Here's  Danny  come  all  the  way  from  New  York 
to  see  you." 

The  first  thought  that  flashed  into  Dan's  head  was 
a  wonder  at  the  habit  of  well  persons  to  address  ill 
adults  as  if  they  were  sick  children.  The  next  was 
rather  a  realization  of  the  imperative:  a  realization 
that  now,  at  last,  he  must  turn  round. 

He  turned.     He  advanced. 

Old  Tom  had  been  his  son's  tower  of  strength. 
He  had  been  erect  and  tall.  He  had  been  assertive, 
determined,  proud.  He  had  been  a  masterful  figure 
in  his  town  and  the  master  in  his  house.  He  had 
been  the  protector  of  his  wife,  and  the  tyrant,  though 
latterly  the  beneficent  and  distant  tyrant,  of  his  son. 
And  all  that  was  only  a  few  days  since. 

Now,  in  spite  of  the  dimmed  gas-flame,  Dan  saw 
that  these  things  were  past. 

Tom  Barnes  lay  on  the  big  black  walnut  bed  in 
which  Dan  had  been  brought  into  the  world.  The 
figure  was  rigid;  the  face  upturned;  the  knotted  hands 
outstretched,  empty,  and  strangely  unoccupied,  upon 
a  coverlet  that  clung  with  frightful  fidelity  to  that 
which  was  beneath  it. 

"  Father!  "-said  Dan,  and  came  closer. 

Tom's  cheeks  were  warmed  by  a  dusky  flush.  His 
chin-beard,  grown  white,  rose  and  fell  grotesquely 
with  each  shallow  gasp.  His  lips  were  livid,  and 
above  the  upper  lip  a  gray  stubble  was  sprouting. 


346      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

His  nose  jutted  from  the  emaciated  flesh,  abnormally 
large.  Beneath  matted  hair,  touched,  as  if  by  frost, 
his  hazel  eyes  were  dull  and  staring,  fixed  upon  the 
full  shape  of  that  thought  which  neither  Dan  nor 
Mrs.  Barnes  had  dared  fully  to  utter. 

The  young  man  remembered  many  things.  He 
remembered  awkward  tendernesses  given  him  in  his 
childhood;  he  remembered  long  forgotten  benefits; 
he  remembered  his  recent  anger  at  the  refusal  of  a 
loan. 

"  Pop !  "  he  sobbed;  "  O  Pop !  "  and  sat  upon  the 
edge  of  the  bed. 

Tom's  hand  trembled  on  the  coverlet.  He  tried 
to  speak,  but  was  interrupted  by  a  low  cough  seem- 
ingly unable  to  accomplish  its  purpose. 

Mrs.  Barnes  leaned,  from  one  side  of  the  bed,  Dan 
from  the  other. 

"  Yes,  yes,"  they  said. 

Tom  made  another  effort. 

"  Mother,"  he  gasped  in  a  voice  that  was  un- 
familiar, '"  those  bottles—  One  finger  was  raised 
just  enough  to  indicate  the  table  with  its  burden  of 
medicines. 

"  It  isn't  time  for  a  dose  yet,"  said  Mrs.  Barnes. 

"  I  know — but  " — the  lifelong  passion  for  orderli- 
ness was  strong  upon  him — "  they  ain't  straight.  Fix 
'em  straight — please." 

For  the  moment,  but  for  the  moment  only,  some- 
thing of  the  old  situation  was  re-established.  The 
husband  had  ordered;  the  wife  obeyed. 

Tom's  eyes  turned  slowly  to  his  son. 

"  Well,  Dan,"  he  said. 

Dan  scarcely  dared  to  look  up. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      347 

"  I'm — I'm  sorry  you're  so  sick,"  said  Dan. 

"  Don't  bother  about  that,"  the  father  gasped. 
"  I  want  to  say  somethin'  to  you — to  say  somethin'." 

"  Now?  "  Dan  fell  under  that  spell  of  the  sick- 
room which  commands  the  living  to  guard  the  agoniz- 
ing spark  against  extinction.  "  Perhaps  to-morrow 
when  you're  better— 

"  I  won't  be  better  to-morrow.     No,  sir." 

"  But  you're  so  sick  just  now,  pop." 

"  I  ain't  sick,"  whispered  Tom,  gnawing  his  under 
lip.  "  I'm  dyin'.  Just  wore  out,  that's  all.  The 
machine's  wore  out."  His  voice  was  slow  and 
difficult,  but  his  breath  was  a  little  easier,  and,  when 
Dan  would  have  deprecated,  he  went  doggedly  on: 
"  Don't  interrupt.  I  been  proud  o'  you,  Dan.  I 
want  you  to  get  on. — You  haven't  written  none  about 
how  you're  gettin'  on,  'cept — that  loan.  How  are 
you  gettin'  on,  Danny?  " 

The  son  turned  his  face  away  and  swallowed. 

"  Fine,"  said  he. 

There  was  a  brief  pause  in  which  Tom  collected 
his  feeble  energy. 

"  That's  good,"  he  at  last  resumed.  "  Good.  I 
want  you  to  think  over  about  takin'  charge  o'  the 
store.— Will  you  ?" 

There  was  wistfulness  in  his  voice. 

"  I'll  think  it  over,"  said  Dan. 

"  That's  all  I  want,  Dan:  I  want  that  you  should 
think  over  it.  It's  a  good  business.  I  built  it,  an' 

I  know.  If  they  was  some  young  blood  in  It 

You  mind  what  I  said  to  you  once  about — chance 
of  a  big  combination?  " 

Dan  nodded. 


348       THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Well,  if  you  could  interest  some  New  York 
capital " 

But  Mrs.  Barnes  had  returned  as  if  from  re- 
arranging the  medicine  bottles.  She  wiped  the  pa- 
tient's forehead  with  a  firm  hand. 

"  You  mustn't  talk  so  much,"  she  commanded. 

In  either  her  touch  or  her  tone,  there  was  a  sug- 
gestion to  which  her  master  succumbed. 

"  But,  mother "  he  pleaded. 

"  Not  now,"  she  said. 

§  5.  Although  Tom  remained  broad  awake,  Mrs. 
Barnes  and  her  son  sat  still,  or,  when  they  rose, 
walked  on  tiptoe. 

Dan  looked  at  the  bottles.  He  tried  to  decipher 
their  labels,  but  the  light  was  poor  and  his  eyes  un- 
certain. He  gave  it  up.  He  crossed  to  his  mother. 
He  urged  her  to  go  to  bed,  but  she  would  not.  He 
told  her  that  he  could  do  all  that  was  to  be  done, 
but  she  refused.  He  said  that  the  maid  could  be 
wakened  to  share  the  watch  with  him;  but  Sarah 
Barnes  elected  to  remain  with  her  husband.  So  Dan 
took  a  chair  beside  his  mother,  his  elbows  on  his 
thighs  and  his  hands  hanging  loosely  between  his 
long  legs.  He  was  not  thinking;  he  was  waiting. 
He  realized  how  horrible  it  was  that  he  should  be 
waiting.  After  a  time  he  wished  to  whisper  a  ques- 
tion, but  his  voice,  from  disuse,  he  felt  to  be  un- 
trustworthy. He  cleared  his  throat.  He  whispered 
to  Mrs.  Barnes. 

"  Has  he  eaten  anything?  " 

"  I  tried  some  soup  and  then  some  milk,"  she 
whispered  in  reply;  "  but  he  couldn't  keep  'em  down." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      349 

"  And  poultices?     Don't  they  use  poultices?" 

"  I  did  that,  too,  at  first,  for  his  chest;  but  the 
doctor  said  not  to-night." 

The  mention  of  the  physician  gave  Dan  something 
to  attack. 

"  I  don't  believe  he  knows  much,"  said  Dan. 
"When  will  he  be  back?" 

"  He  said  at  six;  sooner,  if  I  telephoned." 

They  fell  silent  again,  listening  to  the  patient's 
rapid  breaths,  each  one  of  which  was  dull  and  audible. 
Every  now  and  then  Sarah  Barnes  would  walk  to  the 
bed  and  wipe  her  husband's  gray  lips  with 
a  handkerchief  that  the  spittle  stained  a  rusty 
brown. 

For  hours  this  continued,  old  Tom's  sunken  eyes 
now  fixed  on  Dan  and  now  on  the  approaching  figure 
of  Death. 

Once,  at  about  half-past  five  o'clock,  the  sick  man 
spoke  again.  His  pulse  was  lighter,  and  his  voice 
more  broken.  His  mind  had  gone  back  to  his 
early  instruction  of  Dan;  and  his  fragmentary  sen- 
tences again  admonished  his  son  to  love  of  coun- 
try, to  reverence  for  those  who  were  making  that 
country  industrially  great,  and  to  imitation  of  these 
industrial  chieftains. 

"  You  can  be  worth  a  hundred  thousand  dollars," 
he  said.  "  An'  the  Lord  will  give  thee  '  that  which 
thou  hast  not  asked,  both  riches  an'  honor :  so  that — 

so  that '  *'  His  voice  quavered.  "  What's  the 

rest  of  it?  "  he  asked.  "  I  forget  how  it  goes  then. 
I  forget." 

"  Now,  that's  enough,  father,"  Mrs.  Barnes  in- 
terposed. 


350      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Had  he  heard  her,  Tom  would  have  obeyed,  but 
he  was  too  rapt  to  hear. 

"  An'  you  must  be  good,"  he  continued.  "  Re- 
member that — Danny." 

Dan  was  once  more  seated  on  the  bed. 

"  Yes,  sir,"  said  he.  "  How  are  you  feeling  now, 
pop?" 

"  The  same,"  his  father  answered.  His  voice 
steadied  itself.  "  I'm  all  right,  son. — I'm  goin'  to 
Jesus.  Yes,  sir.  I'm  not  afraid.  I'm  goin'  home." 
But  his  under  lip  must  have  trembled,  for  his  chin- 
beard  moved  spasmodically. 

Dan,  on  a  quick  impulse,  bent  and  kissed  the  dusky 
cheeks.  Then  the  custom  that  bids  us  hide  our  emo- 
tions from  the  sick  asserted  itself. 

"  That  doctor's  late,"  he  said  huskily.  "  I'll  just 
go  downstairs  and  telephone." 

§  6.  He  did  telephone.  The  telephone,  a  more 
or  less  recent  concession  to  the  times,  was  in  the 
"  library,"  and  Dan  went  there  and  lit  the  gas,  cast- 
ing its  yellow  light  over  the  mural  decorations  that 
had,  so  long  ago,  been  brought  from  the  Front  Street 
house :  the  embroidered  scriptural  texts,  the  certificate 
of  Tom's  Grand  Army  membership,  the  steel  en- 
gravings of  the  little  Moses  in  the  Nile,  Lincoln  and 
the  chattel-slave,  and  William  Henry  Harrison's 
Cabinet. 

Dan  called  the  doctor,  brought  him  from  his  bed 
to  the  other  end  of  the  wire,  and  plied  him  with 
questions. 

The  doctor  replied  indefinitely.  Perhaps  he  had 
better  come  at  once.  He  could  speak  more  fully 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      351 

then.  Yes,  from  the  start  there  had  been  a  good 
deal  of  pleurisy  present.  When  he  had  first  been 
called  in,  the  patient's  temperature  was  a  hundred  and 
five.  Oxygen  treatment?  There  were  no  facilities 
in  Americus.  Cause?  Well,  that  was  hard  to  de- 
termine; there  were  always  many  causes.  The  doc- 
tor spoke  wisely  of  fatigue  and  mental  depression, 
and  rang  off. 

Dan  went  upstairs  by  way  of  his  old  room,  the 
room  at  the  window  of  which  there  had  once  shivered 
a  little  boy  in  canton-flannel  night-drawers,  bathed 
in  moonlight,  and  asking  of  the  sky  a  riddle  that 
the  sky  would  not  answer.  He  paused  at  the  window 
now,  and  looked  out  at  the  gray  mist  enveloping  the 
earth.  He  thought  how  strong  and  splendid  his 
father  had  always  been:  his  father,  now  no  longer 
the  master.  .  .  . 

When  Dan  returned  to  the  sick-room,  it  had  ceased 
to  be  a  sick-room :  Tom  Barnes  was  dead. 


XXII 

THEY  buried  him  in  the  Barnes  plot  of  the 
Americus  cemetery;  the  best  division  of  the 
local  burying-ground,  which  Old  Tom,  with 
an  earnest  eye  to  the  future,  had  acquired  twenty 
years  before.  The  shop  on  Elm  Avenue  was  closed, 
and  the  clerks  attended  the  services  in  what  The  Spy 
called  "  a  body."  They  sent  a  number  of  white  roses 
tortured,  by  sundry  cruel  wires,  into  a  distant  likeness 
to  an  anchor  and  labelled:  "Our  Dear  Employer." 
The  Merchants1  Association  sent  a  broken  pillar  of 
violets  and  two  closed  carriages  full  of  members  that 
laughed,  behind  drawn  curtains,  and,  over  their  ci- 
gars, told  stories  of  the  dead  man's  shrewdness. 
There  were  thirty  carriages  in  all. 

"  An'  it  was  a  gran'  spectacle,"  said  Freddie  Fry, 
the  town  loafer  and  the  father  of  Snagsie,  when 
he  came  to  think  it  over.  "Only  I  do  sometimes 
wonder  yet  fer  why  is  it  at  a  funeral,  conwention 
says  it  ain't  quite  respectable  of  a  attendant  not  to 
try  to  look  like  the  feller  inside  the  hearse." 

Freddie  had  become  a  little  more  grizzled,  a  little 
more  stoop-shouldered  than  of  old.  He  had  ceased 
to  be  a  Presbyterian  and  had  passed  successively 
through  the  Reformed  and  United  Brethren  faiths 
until  he  reached  the  local  sect  known  by  the  modest 
title  of  the  Church  of  God.  Otherwise,  he  was  one 
of  the  least  unchanged  inhabitants  that  Dan  ree'n- 
countered  in  Americus. 

352 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      353 

Dan,  however,  when  Freddie  buttonholed  him  on 
the  street  in  front  of  the  now  shabby  Adams  Hotel 
on  the  day  after  the  funeral,  thought  that  there  was 
no  good  reason  why  a  man's  drunkenness  should  be 
his  armor  against  the  consequences  of  insult. 

"  Shut  up,"  said  Dan,  trying  to  brush  by;  "you're 
drunk,  Fry." 

But  Freddie  held  fast  to  the  lapel  of  Dan's  black 
coat  and  blinked  his  red  eyes  indignantly. 

"  Course  I'm  drunk,"  said  Freddie.  "What  else 
should  I  be?  But  it  was  a  gran'  spectacle,  anyhow. 
An',  Danny,  your  pop  was  a  good  man  still." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  Dan.  "  Now  go  along,  will 
you  please?  " 

"  And  he'd  be  a  good  man  yet  if  he  wasn't  dead 
like,"  persisted  Freddie,  maintaining  as  firm  a  hold 
on  Dan's  coat  as  he  kept  on  the  conversation.  "  Oh, 
well,  that's  the  way  sings  go,  ain't?  Nature  wastes 
nussing,  man  efferysing:  we're  more  use  dead  as  alive, 
an'  luck's  the  god  o'  doctors." 

"  Yes,  yes,"  agreed  Dan,  ashamed  that  he  should 
be  compelled  to  listen  to  a  drunkard's  opinion  of 
Thomas  Barnes.  "  Now  let  me  get  along.  I'm  busy, 
Fry." 

"  Not,"  pursued  Fry,  swaying  rhythmically,  "  not 
as  I'd  say  nussing  against  relitchen  still.  Relitchen's 
a  good  sing,  'specially  fer  women.  Only  what  most 
effery  feller  calls  his  relitchen  is  made  up  o'  one  sing 
the  feller  wants  to  believe  an'  the  fifty  he  just  has 
to  pretend  to.  You  listen  to  me,  Danny.  I  got  a 
son  o'  my  own  an'  I  know  about  relitchen;  I've  tried 
all  the  brands  of  it,  so  I  ought  to.  Most  men  could 
be  Christians  if  it  wasn't  fer  that  there  gommandment 


354      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

about  lovin'  their  fellers,  an'  most  get  what  they  call 
Christianity  without  that." 

Dan  shook  himself  free. 

"  Oh,  go  to  the  devil!  "  he  exclaimed. 

"  No,"  said  Freddie,  shaking  his  touselled  head, 
"  I  don't  belief  in  worryin'  'bout  him.  The  dread  o' 
damnation  is  a  strong  motive  fer  righteousness,  but 
it's  mercenary,  an'  mercenary's  what's  wrong  with 
you  still." 

So  that  was  what  Americus  thought  of  him,  Dan 
reflected  as  he  swung  up  the  street;  and  that  type  of 
mind  represented  Americus.  He  clung  to  his  high 
memories  of  the  city.  How  could  he  ever  return  to 
live  in  the  small  town? 

§  2.  The  effect  upon  him  of  Tom's  death  was  as 
strong  as  the  effects  of  such  events  always  are.  That 
it  would  also  be  as  brief  as  the  effects  of  such  events 
usually  are  upon  young  manhood  he  could  not,  of 
course,  then  perceive.  He  could  at  first  feel  nothing 
but  the  shock  itself. 

Since  the  funeral,  he  had  passed  most  of  the  time 
with  his  silent  and  now  helpless  mother.  He  wanted 
to  console  her,  and  he  reflected  long  upon  what  a 
terrible  thing  his  father's  death  had  been  for  her. 
He  appreciated  her  years-long  dependence  and  her 
resulting  loneliness.  He  honestly  understood  her  feel- 
ings: a  part  of  her  life  had  gone  out  with  her  hus- 
band's, perhaps  the  most  important  part;  she  might 
well  think,  so  Dan  reflected,  that  she  had  small  rea- 
son to  live. 

Then  it  struck  him  that  the  really  important  por- 
tion of  his  thoughts  about  this  death  had  been  thus 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      355 

far  almost  wholly  in  connection  with  his  mother. 
What  of  himself?  Was  the  loss  less  to  him?  With- 
out any  decrease  of  grief  or  of  love  for  his  father, 
he  could  not  but  admit  that  Tom's  release  necessarily 
must  be  a  greater  bereavement  to  the  wife  than  to  the 
son.  To  Dan  the  loss  was  tremendous,  but  it  was 
a  loss  rather  from  his  past  than  from  his  present;  it 
was  a  loss  from  his  childhood.  He  recalled  that,  in 
the  midst  of  those  terrible  hours  by  his  father's  bed- 
side he  had,  for  a  time,  been  merely  waiting,  had 
been  wishing  that  the  fight  would  end,  and  that,  since 
recovery  was  obviously  impossible,  the  sufferer  might 
die  quickly.  Was  it  right  for  a  son  to  wish  that? 
He  would  not  have  revealed  this  wish  by  questioning 
an  adviser  concerning  its  ethics,  but  he  hoped  that 
he  had  not  been  wrong.  In  anyone  else  he  could  have 
borne  to  see  such  suffering,  but  that  his  master  should 
so  fall — that  was  too  much.  Always  thereafter,  when 
Dan  thought  of  his  father,  it  was  either  of  the  father 
that  had  been  when  Dan  was  a  little  boy,  or  else 
of  the  father  during  those  last  hours  in  the  big  black- 
walnut  bed. 

Indeed,  Dan  never  felt  his  manhood  so  decidedly 
as  now.  There  was  no  longer  in  his  mind  a  question 
of  whether  or  not  he  had  won  maturity.  Rather  he 
was  certain  that  maturity  had  been  bestowed  upon 
him  from  without. 

Thus  he  came  to  his  decision.  He  well  remem- 
bered that  bis  father  had  wanted  him  to  take  over 
the  management  of  the  shop,  and  his  sense  of  obedi- 
ence to  such  a  command  potently  survived  from  ear- 
lier days.  Nevertheless,  his  every  other  instinct  re- 
belled against  a  return  to  life  and  work  in  Americus. 


356      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

His  business  instinct  was  able  even  to  argue  logic- 
ally against  such  a  course  and,  at  last,  to  win  the 
argument.  Dan  determined  to  remain  faithful  to 
New  York. 

§  3.  Tom  had  appointed  his  lawyer  as  executor, 
leaving  Dan  the  interest  on  one-third  of  the  estate  and 
the  rest  to  the  widow,  whose  portion  was  to  pass  to  her 
son  upon  her  death ;  but  what  the  estate  would  amount 
to  there  was  as  yet  no  telling.  In  the  meantime,  Mrs. 
Barnes,  the  illness  and  the  funeral  over,  had  relapsed 
into  her  lifelong  habit  of  subserviency  and  leaned  nat- 
urally upon  Dan  as  the  nearest  male  relative  of  her 
husband.  She  therefore  readily  agreed  that  the  shop 
should  be  sold  to  a  firm  of  Doncaster  merchants  anx- 
ious to  extend  their  trade  by  an  Americus  branch, 
but  she  said  that  she  would  not  accept  his  invitation 
to  live  with  him  in  New  York. 

"  I'm  too  used  to  Americus,"  she  explained,  "  an* 
I'm  kind  of  afraid  of  cities,  anyhow." 

"But  what  will  you  do?"  asked  Dan.  "  This 
house  is  too  big  for  you,  all  alone." 

"  Well,  there's  your  father's  second  cousin,  Cousin 
Elva,  you  know.  They've  just  moved  here  from  Five 
Mile  Level.  I  think  I  might  take  a  room  with  them. 
Besides,  Cousin  Elva's  an  invalid.  She  needs  nurs- 
ing, so  I  can  be  kept  busy  there." 

"Haven't  you  had  enough  of  nursing?"  Dan  in- 
quired. 

"No,"  said  his  mother;  "I  think  I'd  like  to  be 
kept  busy,  an'  right  here  in  Americus  where  I've  al- 
ways been  and  where  I  can  see  people  I  know." 

So  she  offered  for  rent  the  large  gray  house  in 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      357 

Oak  Street,  and  went  to  live  with  the  cousin,  and, 
when  the  time  came  for  Dan's  departure,  she  stroked 
his  hand  in  a  furtive  manner;  told  him,  with  a  low- 
ered glance,  to  be  a  good  boy,  and  bade  him  good-by. 
And  Dan  went  back  to  New  York  and  was  without 
work. 

§  4.  "I  don't  know  what  I'm  going  to  do,"  he 
said  to  the  first  acquaintance  that  he  met  there.  "  I'm 
out  of  a  job." 

"  Get  one,"  said  the  acquaintance. 

Obviously,  to  follow  this  advice  was  necessary. 
Dan  could  not  go  into  business  with  the  young  man 
of  the  brilliant  waistcoats  until  the  requisite  capital 
was  forthcoming,  and  Dan  would  have  no  capital 
until  his  father's  estate  was  settled.  He  reviewed  his 
predicament,  decided  at  last  that  Harold  Richardson 
was  the  only  person  upon  whom  he  could  lay  any  part 
of  the  blame,  and  insisted  that  Harold  supply  the 
remedy. 

"  You  got  me  into  this,"  he  said  when,  in  Harold's 
law-office  in  the  suburban  country-town,  he  had  stated 
his  case;  "  if  it  hadn't  been  for  you,  I'd  never  have 
had  that  trouble  with  Silverstone.  Now  I  think  it's 
up  to  you  to  help  me  out." 

Harold  good-naturedly  admitted  his  sense  of  ob- 
ligation. 

"  I  see,"  said  he:  "  I've  permitted  the  lamb  to  be 
shorn  and  nt)w  I'll  have  to  get  busy  and  temper  the 
wind.  Is  that  it?" 

"  That's  it,"  Dan  agreed. 

"  Hum.  I  wonder Wait  a  minute.  Give  me 

twenty-four  hours.  There's  the  Immutable  Life 


358       THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

Insurance  Company.  The  governor  once  had  a  nar- 
row escape  from  being  elected  a  director  there. 
Would  you  mind  trying  your  hand  at  insurance,  just 
for  a  fill-in?" 

Dan  did  not  mind,  and  in  a  short  time  he  was 
trying  his  hand.  Anybody,  he  found,  could  get  a 
place  in  the  business  of  soliciting  insurance,  but  the 
anybodies  worked  on  a  commission  basis  only, 
^whereas,  Mr.  Richardson  at  Harold's  request  having 
vouched  for  Dan's  energy,  efficiency,  and  impecca- 
bility, Dan  was  granted  an  agent's  contract  with  a 
small  assured  salary  for  six  months'  time  and  all  such 
commissions  as  he  could  earn  over  the  amount  of  his 
wage. 

In  a  tall  building  on  Broadway,  he  had  what  was 
called  desk-room,  which  consisted  of  a  few  feet  of 
space  in  a  bare  apartment,  where  there  were  rows 
and  rows  of  roll-topped  desks  and  swivel-chairs,  all 
so  close  together  that  you  could  not  pull  out  the  arm 
of  your  desk  without  moving  your  chair  and  could 
not  move  your  chair  without  hitting  the  desk  of  the 
man  behind  you.  Here  you  appeared  in  the  morning, 
if  you  so  wished,  and  hither  you  returned  as  occasion 
required.  The  rest  of  the  day  you  called  on  "  pros- 
pects "  and  explained,  to  people  that  did  not  want  to 
listen,  the  sort  of  policy  that  you  thought  it  would 
be  best  for  you  for  them  to  buy.  Thus  Dan. 

He  began  well.  Once  more  clean  in  body  and  alert 
of  mind,  he  gave  his  whole  heart  to  the  work.  Fig- 
ures had  always  been  easy  to  him,  and  he  mastered 
readily  the  lessons  that,  in  his  Saturday  classes  for 
instruction,  this  General  Agent  of  the  Immutable  had 
elected  to  expound.  Dan  unraveled  the  mystery  of 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      359 

"futures";  he  mastered  long  actuaries'  tables;  he 
came  to  understand  the  nature  of  "  good  risks  "  and 
"  bad  "  and  the  horrid  certainty  of  the  mortality- 
calculations ;  he  fixed  clearly  in  mind  all  the  details 
and  data  of  a  wide  variety  of  policies  and  the  advan- 
tages of  his  own  company  over  all  competitors. 
Moreover,  he  had  made,  while  with  O'Neill  &  Silver- 
stone,  acquaintances  that  it  was  now  no  great  matter 
to  approach.  His  difficulty  was  his  slowness  of 
speech,  but  that  did  not  stand  in  his  way  wiui  per- 
sons that  already  knew  him ;  and  it  was  not  until  after 
he  had  exhausted  the  acquaintanceship  of  his  broker- 
age days  that  he  began  to  feel  this  impedi- 
ment. 

For  some  time  he  was  almost  happy.  He  saw  a 
distant  chance  of  laying  aside  enough  money  to  start 
in  some  business  for  himself,  though  not  before  the 
settlement  of  his  father's  estate.  He  called  often  on 
Judith,  and  their  friendship  deepened. 

§  5.  One  day  he  was  surprised  to  see  the  thin 
figure  of  Twigg  leaving  the  room  into  which  appli- 
cants were  taken  for  a  physical  examination  much  as 
candidates  are  prepared  for  initiation  into  a  fra- 
ternity, "  applicants  "  being  the  term  used  to  describe 
those  who  have  been  wheedled  into  signing  their 
names  to  an  application  for  insurance.  Dan  walked 
up  to  the  man  that  had  so  outrageously  overcharged 
him  for  medical  service. 

"  Hello,"  he  said  threateningly,  "  are  you  taking 
out  a  policy?  " 

Twigg  shrank  away.  His  granular  eyelids  blinked 
rapidly. 


360      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  No,"  he  answered.  "  I'm  working  here.  I've 
just  been  made  one  of  the  company's  physicians." 

uWhat?"  Dan  could  scarcely  believe  this. 
"  How  did  they  ever  come  to  take  you  on?  " 

There  was  a  distinct  change  in  the  fellow's  manner: 
his  old  bravado  was  not  there. 

"  Mr.  Fry,  Mr.  Lysander  G.  Fry,  your  friend,  you 
know — he  got  me  the  place." 

"Fry?    How?" 

"  I  believe  he  has  some  interests  with  some  of  the 
officers." 

Dan  ran  a  cold  eye  over  this  intruder. 

"  I  don't  know  what  the  company's  coming  to," 
he  said,  precisely  as  if  he  were  himself  an  officer,  and 
one  of  long  service. 

Thereat  Twigg  surrendered  unconditionally.  He 
led  the  way  to  the  nearest  barroom  and,  while  he 
drank  from  a  glass  that  shook  in  his  bony  hand,  told 
the  miserable  story  of  his  present  condition. 

The  wife  that  he  adored  had  at  last  succeeded  in 
ruining  him.  That  accomplished,  she  secured  a  di- 
vorce and  an  order  for  heavy  alimony.  The  abject 
man  had  lost  his  practice  through  the  publicity  given 
his  domestic  troubles;  he  needed  every  cent  that  he 
could  contrive  to  procure,  and  the  position  with  the 
Immutable  was  his  last  chance.  He  begged  Dan  not 
to  speak  ill  of  him  in  the  office. 

It  was  evident  that  the  doctor  still  loved  his  wife, 
and  this  love  touched  the  younger  man  even  while  he 
despised  its  victim.  Dan  had  one  of  those  bursts  of 
boyish  enthusiasm  that  were  becoming  more  and  more 
rare  in  him. 

"  Don't   say   another   word    about    it,"    he    com- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      361 

manded.  "  I  understand.  I  understand  why  you 
gouged  me.  It's  all  right.  And  I'll  send  some  of 
my  applications  to  you.  I'll  throw  everything  I  can 
your  way." 

The  only  manner  in  which  to  learn  to  like  a  man 
is  to  help  him.  That  way  Dan  now  followed,  and 
Twigg  was  almost  grovelingly  grateful.  Within  a 
fortnight,  the  pair  had  formed  a  casual  friend- 
ship. 

§  6.  It  was  this  friendship  that  provoked,  though 
indirectly,  Dan's  first  real  quarrel  with  Judith.  She 
had  seen  him  and  Twigg  together.  She  asked  the 
former  about  the  latter  and  received  a  reply  that  was 
sufficiently  frank  to  reveal  the  facts  of  Twigg's  career 
and  sufficiently  restrained  to  withhold  Dan's  part 
therein. 

"  I  don't  like  him,"  said  Judith. 

She  was  seated,  that  evening,  on  the  decrepit  sofa 
in  the  parlor  of  her  lodging-house,  with  Dan  facing 
her  from  a  degenerate  chair. 

"  You  don't  know  him,"  said  Dan. 

"  I  know  what  you  tell  me  about  him,"  Judith 
countered,  "  and  I  know  that  if  you  make  asso- 
ciates of  meaner  souls  and  smaller  minds  than  your 
own,  you  can  expect  nothing  in  return  except  an  influ- 
ence that  will  degrade  your  own  soul  and  narrow 
your  own  mind." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  pretend  Twigg  is  anything  very 
fine "  began  Dan. 

"  I  should  hope  not,"  she  interjected.  "  If  he  were 
a  school-teacher,  he  would  whip  only  the  smaller 
boys." 


362      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  But  he's  doing  the  decent  thing  by  his  wife," 
Dan  concluded. 

"  How  do  you  know  that?  "  asked  Judith. 

"  He  told  me  so  himself." 

"He  did?"  Judith  gave  rein  to  laughter.  She 
said,  just  then,  no  other  word,  but  her  mirth,  the 
something  close  to  scorn  in  her  brown  eyes,  said  a 
great  deal  for  her.  It  seemed  to  say:  "  You  accept 
his  testimony  for  that.  You  take  the  word  of  the 
most  prejudiced  witness,  and  you  call  no  other  wit- 
nesses. The  wife  is  always  right  and  the  husband 
always  wrong.  You  are  making  a  fool  of  yourself 
by  your  romantic  devotion  to  a  man  that  values  you 
only  because  of  the  business  that  you  can  bring  him." 

It  was  a  little  thing.  Even  if  Dan's  interpretation 
of  her  manner  were  the  correct  one,  it  was  scarcely 
worthy  a  serious  disagreement;  but  it  touched  him 
on  what  was  at  that  time  his  tenderest  point. 

He  had  long  thought  that  Judith's  newspaper  work 
had  given  her  a  more  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
world  than  that  he  gained  from  his  own  experience. 
For  months  this  had  been  to  him  one  of  her  great 
charms.  But  now  he  was  changed.  Now  his  father's 
death  had  enforced  upon  him  the  secure  sense  of  his 
maturity  and  worldly  wisdom.  Jrle  was  proud  of 
these  acquisitions;  he  had  displayed  them  grandly 
in  her  presence;  and  here  she  was  mocking  him  for 
a  lack  of  precisely  those  qualities  which  he  had 
thought  he  so  supremely  possessed. 

"  Don't  laugh  that  way,"  he  said,  sharply. 

"Why  not?  "she  asked. 

"  Because  I  don't  like  it." 

Judith  laughed  again. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      363 

"  Stop  it,  I  say !  "  commanded  Dan.  He  rose. 
"  You  treat  me  as  if  I  was  a  child." 

"  That's  just  it :  you  are  a  child." 

Her  words  were  not  meant  to  be  unkind,  but  they 
were  barbed  arrows  in  his  heart. 

"  I  am  three  years  older  than  you  are,"  he  said. 

"  In  years,  yes;  but  in  everything  else  I  have  a 
handicap  that  equals  a  decade." 

He  turned  on  her. 

"  Then  you  oughtn't  to  have,"  he  declared.  "  No 
woman  ought  to  have  the  point  of  view  that  you 
have." 

"  And  no  man,"  said  Judith,  calmly,  "  ought  to 
grow  to  your  age  and  be  so  ignorant  of  the 
world." 

"  I'm  not  so  ignorant  as  you  think  I  am." 

"  Yes,  you  are.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  you  are  pro- 
foundly ignorant.  You're  altogether  unable  to  take 
care  of  yourself." 

"  At  any  rate,  I  haven't  asked  you  to  take  care  of 
me.  I  can  choose  my  friends  for  myself." 

He  spoke  the  more  bitterly  because  he  had  just 
realized  that,  until  a  few  minutes  before,  he  was  al- 
most ready  to  ask  this  woman  to  share  his  life  and, 
implicitly,  to  protect  him. 

Judith,  however,  took  him  with  a  seriousness  that 
was  as  strong  as  his  anger. 

"  If  you  will  think  that  over,"  she  said,  "  you  will 
see  that 'it's  a  mistake.  You  aren't  able  properly  to 
choose  your  friends." 

"  Then  perhaps  I  made  a  mistake  when  I  chose 
you!" 

"  Perhaps  you  did.     Don't  be  foolish,  Dan.     A 


364      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

man  can  need  a  guardian  and  still  be  delightful. 
Your  ignorance  is  not  altogether  your  own  fault;  it 
is  the  fault  of  your  bringing  up.  You're  not  to 
blame;  your  parents  are." 

That,  in  the  circumstances,  was  the  last  word 
needed.  Still  feeling  keenly  his  father's  death,  Dan 
detected  in  her  words  a  slur  upon  Old  Tom's  mem- 
ory. He  walked  across  the  room  to  her,  his  hands 
deep  in  his  trousers'  pockets,  his  lips  twitching. 

"  Do  you  know,"  he  inquired,  u  that  I  was  just  be- 
ginning to  think  I  was  in  love  with  you?  " 

She  sat  quite  still  upon  the  sofa,  looking  up  at  him. 
Her  arms  were  outspread,  and  her  fingers  traced  fig- 
ures in  the  cloth.  A  wiser  man  than  Dan  would  have 
understood  the  quick  alteration  in  her  manner,  the 
message  of  her  wide-eyed  silence.  But  Dan  read  none 
of  these  signs. 

"  Well,  I  was  beginning  to  think  it,"  he  resumed; 
"  and  now  you've  shown  me  how  near  I  came  to  being 
bossed  for  all  the  rest  of  my  life." 

He  intended  that  this  should  annoy  her,  and  it 
did.  Judith  laughed. 

"  I  told  you  that  you  were  ignorant,"  she  said. 
"  Here  you  have  been  going  about  assuming  that  I 
would  take  charge  of  you.  All  you  would  have  had 
to  do  was  to  ask  me,  I  suppose?  " 

Dan  bit  his  lip  and  turned  away. 

"  Good-by,"  he  said. 

"  Really,"  continued  Judith,  disregarding  his 
adieu,  "  if  I  did  marry,  Dan,  it  would  be  to  some- 
body at  least  my  own  age." 

"  Good-by,"  repeated  Dan. 

He  did  not  look  back.     He  essayed  a  dignified 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      365 

exit,  and  nearly  struck  his  head  on  the  edge  of  the 
open  door. 

§  7.  We  are  apt  to  condone  our  sins  by  an  appeal 
to  the  theory  that  temptation  is  sent  us  only  in  our 
moments  of  weakness:  the  Devil  is  a  consolatory  in- 
vention. The  truth,  however,  is  that  the  tempta- 
tion is  always  at  hand,  but  that  we  will  not 
take  it  up  until  we  feel  so  inclined  or  persuade  our- 
selves that  we  are  forced  to  it.  There  is,  therefore, 
no  satanic  strategy  by  which  to  account  for  what  im- 
mediately happened  to  Dan. 

He  left  Judith's  boarding-house  in  a  rage  of  re- 
bellion against  her.  In  that  rage  he  passed  the  two 
days  following :  a  child ;  a  child ;  that  she  should  think 
him  a  child!  It  was  in  the  same  rage  that,  on  the 
third  evening,  he  fell  in  with  Harold  at  a  restau- 
rant. 

Young  Richardson  was  seated  at  a  table  set  for 
three  persons.  He  looked  bored. 

"  Hello,"  said  Dan.    "  How  are  you  ?  " 

"  Feeling  like  the  typical  Britisher,"  Harold  an- 
swered. "  You  know:  'Lovely  day,  ain't  it?  Let's 
go  out  and  kill  something.'  " 

"  Well,"  Dan  said,  "  I'm  not  a  grouse.    Don't  kill 


me." 


"  I  won't.  I  don't  want  to.  I  want  to  kill  the 
people  that  I've  asked  here  to  dine.  You  know  the 
man.  It's  your  old  college  chum,  Peter  Asche." 

"  And  you  asked  him  here?  " 

"  I  had  to  ask  him  somewhere:  I  owe  him  more 
money.  The  only  thing  that  softens  him  is  his  wife. 
She  wants  to  get  into  Society  out  our  way,  where  they 


366      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

live.  I'm  supposed  to  be  a  pillar  of  Society.  And  so 
— you  see?  " 

"  No,  I  don't.  How  is  it  going  to  get  her  into 
Society  to  have  her  here?  " 

"  It's  not.  But  I  couldn't  have  her  at  home:  that 
would  give  my  people  what  mother's  New  England 
cousins  call  conniption-fits.  So  I  have  her  here.  Be- 
sides, since  she  thinks  it  will  help,  nobody's  harmed." 

"  I  didn't  know  Asche  had  a  wife." 

"  He  has  more  wife  than  anything  else.  She's 
really  not  bad  in  a  knock-you-down  sort  of  way.  Wait 
till  you  see  her.  And,  say,  I  wish  you'd  dine  with  us. 
They're  late  now  and  they're  sure  to  stay  till  all 
hours,  and  perhaps  if  you  were  here  you  could  break 
up  the  party  before  ten  o'clock  and  give  me  a  chance 
to  get  'round  to  Madge's  club." 

Dan  had  nothing  worse  to  do,  so  he  accepted.  He 
sat  at  a  place  that  the  waiter  laid  for  him  and  was 
presently  given  a  chance  to  see  the  money-lender's 
wife. 

She  entered  the  door  alone;  but  she  was  the  sort 
of  woman  whose  entrance  immediately  attracts  the 
fluttering  ministrations  of  surrounding  attendants. 
By  the  time  that  Harold  had  hurried  up  to  her,  with 
Dan  following,  she  was  being  conducted  by  the  head- 
waiter,  flanked  by  two  of  his  lieutenants  in  the  char- 
acter of  outriders  and  followed  by  two  or  three  pri- 
vates from  the  ranks. 

A  large  woman,   full  of  sweeping  curves,   Nina 

Asche  had  long  since   acquired   exactly  the  air  of 

grandeur  to  which  she  had  aspired.     Her  ermine 

cloak  hung  open  over  an  evening  gown  of  black  with 

,  splashes  of  red  and  a  corsage  cut  so  low  upon  her 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      367 

swelling  white  breast  that  Dan  was  at  first  afraid  to 
look  at  it.  Her  face,  under  auburn  hair,  was  pink 
and  white,  but  at  once  passionate  and  determined; 
her  lips  were  damp  and  vividly  red,  and  in  her  blue 
eyes  little  lamps  seemed  to  be  burning.  She  pos- 
sessed, above  all,  the  air  of  having  regally  rid  herself 
of  that  modesty  which  Balzac  calls  "  the  modesty 
of  the  body."  She  did  not  walk,  she  glided,  and  yet 
she  successfully  concealed  the  fact  that  her  apparent 
languor  was  real  activity. 

1  This  is  awfully  jolly,"  averred  Harold,  as  he 
pressed  the  jeweled  hand  that  she  extended  to  him. 
"  Have  you  run  away  and  left  Mr.  Asche  at  home?  " 

To  his  amazement,  she  placidly  replied  in  the  af- 
firmative. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  "  I  have.  Just  at  the  last  minute, 
Peter  got  one  of  those  attacks  of  his  and  so  of  course 
he  couldn't  come.  I  knew  that,  if  I  telephoned  you, 
you  would  call  the  dinner  off " 

"  Never,  if  I  thought  there  was  a  chance  of  getting 
you  here  alone,  Mrs.  Asche." 

"  That's  nice  of  you.  Anyhow,  I  just  let  Peter 
persuade  me  to  come  by  myself." 

Harold  was  not  the  host  to  show  amazement. 

"  I'm  no  end  glad,"  he  said,  and  presented  Dan. 

Nina  put  out  her  hand,  and  Dan,  overcome  by  her 
radiance,  thought  that  he  had  never  yet  felt  a  pres- 
sure half  so  sweet  as  that  which  followed. 

All  through  the  dinner,  he  sat  looking  at  her  with 
honest  admiration  in  his  eyes.  He  could  not,  for  a 
long  time,  speak. 

He  could  not,  for  a  long  time,  take  his  glance  from 
the  turn  of  her  cheek,  the  delicate  arch  of  her  brows, 


368      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

and  the  damp  redness  of  her  bow-shaped  lips;  and 
then,  as  the  champagne  tingled  in  his  veins,  he  could 
not  cease  looking  at  her  graceful  neck,  her  shoulders, 
her  moving  breasts. 

The  wine  that  tingled  in  his  veins  brightened  his 
cheeks  and  tipped  his  tongue  and  made  him  some- 
thing pleasant  to  this  woman's  regard.  She  assumed 
that  he  was  a  member  of  Harold's  particular  set  and 
that  it  would  serve  her  as  well  to  bewitch  him  as  to 
charm  Harold.  She  felt,  besides,  a  hint  of  the  scorn 
that  lurked  in  the  younger  Richardson's  too  ornate 
politeness,  but  Dan's  sincere  adoration  she  did  not 
once  doubt.  He  was,  besides,  a  broad-shouldered, 
upright,  deep-chested  example  of  humanity,  and 
he  made  thereby  a  direct  appeal.  She  talked  to  him, 
she  smiled  at  him;  she  leaned  toward  him  until  the 
edge  of  her  corsage  touched  the  edge  of  her  wineglass. 
She  let  him  plainly  understand  that  she  liked  him. 
And  she  did  like  him. 

Harold,  anxious  to  get  away,  soon  saw  the 
current  of  events.  Being  a  person  of  resource,  he 
slipped,  unobserved,  a  note  to  the  waiter  who,  in 
obedience  to  its  orders,  soon  approached  with  a  mes- 
sage to  the  effect  that  Harold's  family  physician 
wanted  him  at  the  telephone. 

"  I'm  so  sorry,"  complained  Harold,  when  he  re- 
turned to  the  table.  "  My  little  sister  Lucile  has  had 
a  rather  serious  seizure  of  some  sort,  and  that  was 
a  message  calling  me  home." 

They  expressed  their  regret  and  made  as  if  to  rise. 

"  But  don't  do  that,"  Harold  protested.  "  I  feel 
badly  enough  about  all  this;  don't  add  to  it  by  making 
me  feel  that  I've  quite  spoiled  the  end  of  your  even- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      369 

ing.  Mrs.  Asche,  won't  you  tell  Mr.  Barnes  that  he 
must  play  the  host  in  my  absence?  " 

Nina  turned  her  head  toward  Dan;  her  eyes  met 
his.  For  just  an  instant  her  lids  drooped  softly  over 
the  lighted  pupils. 

"  She  scarcely  has  to  urge  me  to  do  that,"  said 
Dan,  and,  a  few  minutes  later,  found  himself,  with 
Harold  gone,  filling  the  role  that  his  companion  had 
resigned  to  him. 

At  Nina's  invitation,  he  moved  his  chair  closer  to 
hers. 

"  I'm  sorry  Richardson's  sister  is  sick,"  said  Dan, 
blushing  at  his  own  audacity;  "  but  I'm  not  sorry  he 
has  gone." 

He  raised  his  glass. 

'  Touch,"  said  Nina,  raising  hers. 

They  touched  glasses. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  she  said,  holding  her  glass  against 
his,  "  that  my  husband  is  sick,  but  I'm  not  sorry  that 
he  is  not  here." 

They  drank. 

Dan  was  thinking: 

"I  have  never  seen  so  wonderful  a  creature. 
She  is  like  what  the  wives  of  captains  of  industry 
must  be,  and  yet  she  is  only  the  wife  of  a  money- 
lender! I  wish  I  had  money.  I  could  fall  in  love 
with  her  and  get  her  away  from  her  husband  then — 
the  thief!  Ignorant  girls  like  Irma  aren't  safe. 
Street-girls  like  Cora  aren't  safe.  I  "wonder  how 
about  married  women?  I'm  not  so  bad;  I'm  just  like 
other  men,  and  I  know  it.  This  woman  likes  me. 
She  must  be  ten  years  older  than  I  am.  That's  thir- 
teen older  than  Judith.  This  woman  knows  more 


370      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

about  the  world  than  Judith'll  ever  know — and  yet 
this  woman  likes  me." 

They  drank  a  great  deal.  Nina  frowned  and  puck- 
ered her  red  lips  and  intimated  that  she  was  un- 
happy with  her  husband  because  he  was  too  old  for 
her.  Dan  explained  that  he  was  not  in  Harold's  set, 
but  soon  would  be,  and  added  that  he,  too,  was  not 
altogether  happy.  They  decided  to  take  a  motor- 
ride  through  Central  Park. 

.They  got  into  the  motor.  Dan  sat  close  to  his 
exuberant  companion,  who  did  not  retreat.  The 
roomy,  smooth-rolling  motor  brought  them  into  the 
darkness  of  the  Park. 

The  great  emotions  are  democratic.  An  angry  lady 
is  an  angry  fishwife,  and  a  passionate  gentleman  is 
a  passionate  stevedore.  Dan's  hand  fell  upon  Nina's. 
She  clutched  it.  His  free  arm  surrounded  her.  Their 
lips  met. 


XXIII 

IT  was  one  of  those  affairs  which,  on  the  part  of 
the  man  concerned,  are  foredoomed  to  brevity. 
Nina  Asche,  an  ambitious  woman  and  an  unsat- 
isfied wife,  had  gone  into  it  without  premeditation; 
she  pursued  it  because  she  found  in  it  some  few  of 
the  many  things  that  she  did  not  have  at  home:  she 
was  fired  by  Dan's  adoration  and  made  drunk  by  the 
virile  devotion  that,  like  a  spendthrift,  he  lavished 
upon  a  woman  bound  to  a  busy  husband  greatly  her 
senior.  But  Dan  had  been  impelled  by  his  training 
and  by  the  pain  of  that  wound  which  Judith  had  in- 
flicted upon  his  pride :  when  the  novelty  of  the  situa- 
tion wore  away,  it  was  certain  that  the  wound  would 
heal.  This  consummation  came  about  within  a  fort- 
night. 

On  a  Thursday,  when  Asche  had  gone  to  Chicago, 
Nina  came  into  New  York  and  passed  three  nights 
with  Dan  at  the  Henri  Quatre,  one  of  the  many  hotels 
designed  for  such  excursionists,  where  this  pair  regis- 
tered as  "  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Jabez  Wilson."  Peter 
having  arranged  to  return  home  on  the  following 
Sunday  evening,  Nina  planned  to  precede  him  by  half 
a  day.  When,  at  noon,  the  breakfast  dishes  had 
been  takerf  from  the  bedroom,  she  spent  some  time 
in  making  a  careful  toilette  and  then  put  her  arms 
about  Dan's  neck  and  kissed  him  feverishly. 

"  Good-by,"  she  said.  "  You  won't  forget  me, 
will  you?  " 


372      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

The  midday  sun  poured  through  the  unshaded 
window  and  beat  upon  her.  It  was  an  unfair  test  for 
a  woman  of  her  age  after  three  such  nights  as  she 
had  passed  in  that  room.  She  looked  a  little  hag- 
gard; she  showed  more  years  than  she  had  known. 
Her  lips  were  dry.  The  lines  from  her  nose  to  the 
corners  of  her  mouth  shone  through  the  powder  that 
had  just  been  placed  above  them.  So  did  the  purple 
marks  beneath  her  now  dulled  eyes,  and  the  crows'- 
feet  at  the  corners. 

Dan  had  just  been  struggling  with  a  collar  that, 
for  the  sake  of  appearances,  he  had  turned  inside 
out  and  that  evinced  a  tendency  to  spring  free  of  its 
button  every  time  he  buttoned  it.  Her  caress  once 
more  set  the  collar  flying. 

"  Look  out!  "  he  said  brusquely.  "  Do  you  want 
me  to  go  downstairs  barenecked?  " 

Her  eyes  filled :  he  had  long  since  conquered  her. 

"  Excuse  me,"  she  said.  u  I  didn't  mean " 

She  ended  in  a  sob. 

"  Oh,  there  you  go !  "  he  said.  "  I  wasn't  trying 
to  hurt  your  feelings."  He  put  his  hand  under  her 
chin  and  kissed  her.  "  Why  won't  you  be  sensible? 
I  just  didn't  want  to  give  you  away  by  coming  down- 
stairs looking  like  a  man  that's  slept  all  night  in  a 
barroom." 

"  Then  why — why  didn't  you  bring  enough  col- 
lars? "  she  moaned. 

"  I  did;  but  when  you  knocked  over  the  cham- 
pagne on  the  bureau  last  night  you  spoiled  the  last 
good  one.  Now,  don't  worry  any  more,  dear.  Be- 
sides, we'll  meet  again  inside  of  a  month  or  so. 
Come  on,  or  you'll  miss  your  train." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      373 

§  2.  The  streets,  when  he  left  her,  were  full  of 
sunshine  and  full  of  people  coming  home  from 
church.  The  sunshine  made  the  streets  seem  very 
clean  and  the  people  in  their  Sunday  clothes  ap- 
peared immaculate  in  body  and  soul. 

Dan  felt  soiled  and  miserable.  He  was  unshaven ; 
his  clothes  needed  pressing,  and  he  was  sure  that  his 
collar  betrayed  the  trick  that  he  had  played  with  it. 
He  had  drunk  a  little  more  than  he  needed  last  even- 
ing. His  hands  were  parched  and  his  head  ached. 
All  his  senses  had  their  memories,  and  his  eyes  kept 
recalling  Nina  as  she  appeared  when  he  awoke,  that 
morning  and  found  her  sleeping  beside  him. 

He  went  to  his  boarding-house  and  lay  on  the  bed 
in  the  second-floor  room  that  he  was  now  occupying. 
When  he  had  opened  the  door,  the  Sunday  paper 
greeted  him,  and  he  read  in  it  the  story  of  a  husband 
who  had,  with  an  ax,  split  open  the  head  of  his  wife 
and  his  wife's  lover. 

Dan  endured  unpleasant  thoughts.  Suppose  Peter 
Asche  should  learn  of  this  affair?  He  might  easily 
learn  of  it.  Indeed,  if  Dan  tried  to  break  with  Nina, 
she  might,  for  sheer  revenge,  herself  inform  her  hus- 
band. Asche  might  be  one  of  the  shooting  sort.  Or 
he  might  begin  a  suit  for  divorce.  He  would  at  least 
have  Dan  dismissed  from  the  Immutable. 

Dan  reflected  that  for  years  he  had  been  skating 
on  ice  that  was  dangerously  thin.  There  had  been 
Irma :  she  had  come  close  to  ending  him.  There  had 
been  the  girl,  whoever  she  was,  that  drove  him  to  the 
quacks.  There  was  Cora,  who  might  yet  return  to 
plague  him.  And  now,  here  was  this  dissipated  wife 
of  a  money-lender,  this  woman  ten  years  his  senior  1 


374      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

What  was  it  that  impelled  him  toward  these  gins? 
His  parents  had  been  clean-lived,  God-fearing  people. 
He  convinced  himself  that  he  was  possessed  of  a 
devil. 

He  got  up  at  last  and  bathed  and  shaved.  He 
realized  that  he  had  not  been  to  church  since  the 
day  of  his  father's  funeral.  He  put  on  the  frock- 
coat  and  silk  hat  in  which  he  had  recently  invested. 
He  took  that  symbol  of  the  Sabbatical  pose,  a  Sun- 
day walking-stick,  and  at  once  felt  more  righteous. 
He  would  go  to  church. 

He  dined  at  a  restaurant  where  he  surprised  the 
waiter  that  habitually  served  him  by  refusing  all  drink 
save  an  aerated  water.  Without  sonic  alcohol  he 
could  scarcely  choke  the  dinner  down  his  throat,  but 
choke  it  he  did,  and  when  he  had  left  the  place  he 
entered  the  first  church  that  lay  in  his  random 
course. 

It  was  an  evangelical  church,  and  the  preacher, 
who  was  a  sallow  man  with  lanthorn-jaws  and  yellow 
teeth,  was  already  in  the  midst  of  his  sermon.  He 
spoke  from  a  text  that  recurred  frequently  in  the 
course  of  his  address : 

"  I  say  unto  you,  that  likewise  joy  shall  be  in 
heaven  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth,  more  than 
over  ninety  and  nine  just  persons  which  need  no  re- 
pentance." 

The  sermon,  it  appeared,  was  an  appeal  for  funds 
for  a  mission  that  this  church  was  conducting  on  the 
Bowery,  and  it  depicted,  with  a  crude  poignancy,  the 
condition  of  the  wretches  for  whose  spiritual  welfare 
this  mission  had  been  established.  It  showed  their 
poverty,  the  ignorance  that  resulted  from  their  pov- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      375 

erty,  and  the  crime  that  was  born  of  their  empty 
bellies  and  their  darkened  minds. 

Dan  listened  to  it  all  with  much  sympathy,  but, 
sorry  as  he  was  for  the  Bowery's  human  scrap-heap, 
he  reflected  that  its  component  parts  had  never,  after 
all,  been  used  to  much  better  conditions  than  those 
in  which  they  now  found  themselves.  He  was  still 
so  young  and  his  life  so  narrow  that  it  seemed  to 
him  that  these  Ishmaelites  of  the  distant  Bowery, 
being  born  to  suffering,  could  not  be  so  sensitive  to 
hardship  as  men  more  gently  reared.  His  own 
trouble  filled  his  mental  foreground,  and  only  once, 
when  the  preacher  made  a  more  general  application 
of  the  parable  of  the  lost  sheep,  did  he  feel  a  twinge. 

The  sermon  ended,  there  was  a  brief  prayer,  dur- 
ing which  the  men  in  the  congregation  leaned  their 
elbows  on  their  knees,  their  heads  in  their  hands,  and 
the  women  carefully  rested  their  foreheads  on  the 
backs  of  the  pews  in  front  of  them  in  order  not  to 
disarrange  their  hats.  Then  followed  the  collection, 
while  a  soprano  voice  from  the  choir  sang  a  plaintive 
hymn. 

The  words  of  that  hymn  did  not  at  once  impress 
Dan;  he  was  moved  only  by  its  emotional  minor 
chords;  but  before  the  first  stanza  had  ended,  the 
import  of  the  text  was  clear  to  him: 

"  My  mother's  hand  is  on  my  brow; 
Her  gentle  voice  is  pleading  now.   .    .   ,-.i 
O  mother,  when  I  think  of  thee, 
'Tis  but  a  step  to  Calvary." 

Words  and  music  awoke  in  Dan  precisely  the 
bitter-sweet  feeling  that  he  had  come  to  the  church 


376      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

at  once  wanting  and  dreading.  He  sat  through  the 
last  hymn,  unable  to  determine  whether  he  liked  it  or 
not. 

"  And  now,"  said  the  minister,  before  the  bene- 
diction, "  we  are  going  to  have  a  short  after-meeting; 
just  a  short  after-meeting  for  those  who  are  interested 
in  bringing  souls  to  Christ  and  such  of  you  here  as 
have  not  yet  come  to  Christ,  but  take  an  interest  in 
the  eternal  welfare  of  your  souls.  I  know  that  it  is 
impossible  for  some  of  you  to  stay,  but  I  will  ask 
those  who  can't  stay  to  move  out  as  quietly  as  may 
be." 

When  the  benediction  had  been  delivered  a  great 
many  persons  rose  and  walked  down  the  aisle  beside 
the  pew  in  which  Dan  was  sitting.  Dan  wanted  to 
join  them,  but  he  felt  a  delicacy  about  leaving  in 
what  seemed  really  the  middle  of  the  service,  so  he 
hesitated  until  it  was  too  late  to  go  without  attract- 
ing especial  attention. 

Then  the  minister,  in  a  quiet  voice,  began  to  follow 
another  line  of  attack. 

"  This  is  a  goodly  gathering,"  he  said.  "  I  wonder 
if  it  is  also  a  Godly  one.  I  can  see  we  are  all  in 
bodily  comfort,  but  I  wonder  if  we  are  all  spiritually 
sound.  After  all,  the  body  lasts  but  a  short  time, 
remember,  and  the  soul  lives  or  dies  forever.  Are 
there  any  here  that  know  not  Jesus?  " 

He  paused  and  looked  thoughtfully  over  his  audi- 
ence. There  was  no  breath  of  reply. 

"  I  know  how  hard  ft  is  to  answer  that  question," 
he  presently  resumed;  "  and  I  know  that  most  of  us 
consider  ourselves  Christians.  But  are  we  really 
Christians?^  Have  we  always  stood  up  for  Jesus? 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      377 

Have  we  never  forgotten  the  Saviour  or  been  ashamed 
to  own  Him?  " 

There  was  still  no  response. 

"  It  takes  courage  to  be  a  Christian,"  the  minister 
continued;  "  sometimes  it  takes  great  courage.  Have 
we  all  had  that  at  all  times?  I  will  begin  more 
broadly  and  put  another  question :  will  all  who  are  not 
Christians  please  rise?  " 

Another  pause.  A  slight  rustling.  The  awkward 
rising  of  one  or  two  persons  and  the  furtive  turning 
of  the  eyes  of  all  the  other  persons  upon  those  who 
had  risen. 

Dan  looked  and  saw  standing  a  well-dressed  man, 
another  man  in  a  shabby  coat,  and  a  bedraggled 
woman.  He  had  a  strong  impulse  to  rise,  but  he 
scolded  his  folly  and  remained  seated. 

;<  Thank  you,"  the  minister  went  on.  "  I  thank 
you.  That  will  do." 

The  persons  that  had  risen  sat  down. 

"  And  now,"  said  the  minister,  "  about  the  rest 
of  us.  These  people  who  are  not  Christians  have 
not  been  afraid  to  rise.  Shall  we  be  less  brave? 
What  about  those  of  us  who  have  been  Christians, 
but  who  have  forgotten  it  ?  Have  none  of  us,  brought 
up  in  righteous  homes,  ever  failed  to  follow  in  our 
parents7  footsteps?  Have  we  never  been  trapped  by 
the  useless  and  unprofitable  pleasures  of  life;  by  ex- 
cessive card-playing  and  dancing^and  such  tfnngs? 
Have  none  of  us?  Remember  the  brightly-lighted 
cafes  and  the  wine  and  the  worse  faults  that  grow  out 
of  patronizing  places  of  that  sort.  I  ask  those  who 
have  been  Christians  and  have  stumbled  and  fallen 
by  the  wayside  to  remember  that  Jesus  can  cleanse 


378      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

them  and  keep  firm  their  feet  if  they  will  but  repent. 
I  ask  them  to  be  as  brave  as  these  who  were  not 
Christians  have  been,  and  to  stand  up  in  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  fact  and  in  request  for  prayers  for  them- 
selves." 

Again  the  pause,  the  glances,  and  the  rising  of 
several  persons,  each  loath  to  be  the  first. 

Dan  felt  his  legs  move  as  if  they  would  raise  him. 
He  held  the  back  of  the  pew. 

"  Is  that  all?"  asked  the  minister.  "Are  there 
in  this  church  to-night  no  wandering  sons?  I  ask 
you  all  to  bow  your  heads  in  silent  prayer  and  then, 
while  none  will  look  at  them,  those  who  want  our 
fellowship  and  help  will  walk  forward  und  take  these 
front  seats.  Come  now :  nobody  will  look  and  no- 
body will  criticise."  His  voice  rose.  "  You  have 
only  to  acknowledge  Christ  and  Him  crucified!  "  he 
declared.  "  Are  there  no  young  men  here  to-night 
who  have  wandered  from  the  faith  they  learned  at 
their  mothers'  knees?  " 

The  voice  stopped.  A  silence  followed:  the  tense 
silence  of  mute  prayer. 

Dan  felt  that  the  minister's  eyes  had  singled  him 
out.  Then  a  woman's  voice,  thin  and  quavering,  be- 
gan the  refrain: 

"  Where  is  my  wandering  boy  to-night? 
Where  is  my  wandering  boy?  " 

Dan  heard  feet  going  up  the  aisle:  one  pair,  two 
pairs,  half  a  dozen.  The  hypnotism  of  the  moment 
seized  him.  He  seemed  to  see  his  father's  coffin; 
he  seemed  to  see  his  mother  as  she  used  to  be 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      379 

when  she  tucked  him  into  bed  at  night;  even  as  she 
must  be  now,  at  Cousin  Elva's  in  Americus.  His  face 
was  wet  with  sweat.  He  stood  up,  strode  to  the  aisle, 
hesitated,  and  then  bolted  toward  the  door. 

A  sleek-haired  usher  tried,  well-meaningly,  to  stop 
him  and  head  him  back. 

"  Let  me  go,"  said  Dan;  "  I'm  sick." 

He  reached  the  street. 

"  I  might  have  gone  up  there!  "  he  panted.  "  If 
I  had  waited  a  minute  longer,  I  would  have  gone 
up  there." 

He  did  not  turn  back  when  he  remembered  that 
he  had  left  his  Sabbatical  cane  in  the  church. 

§  3.  He  did  little  work  during  the  next  day.  He 
was  thinking  over  what  had  happened  to  him. 

How  largely  the  change  in  him  was  due  merely 
to  a  passing  physical  reaction  he  did  not  at  all  com- 
prehend; painfully  aware  only  of  the  effect,  he  as- 
sumed that  the  cause  was  spiritual.  Had  he  thor- 
oughly believed  in  the  creed  of  his  father,  he  would 
have  called  this  change  a  conviction  of  sin. 

Did  he  not  believe?  He  was  uncertain.  At  Mad- 
ison-and-Adams  College  he  had  fancied  that  he  did 
not.  Since  that  time,  he  had  simply  not  thought 
much  about  the  matter. 

Of  a  few  things  he  was,  however,  sure.  He  re- 
membered ^that  he  had  become  a  Christian  when  he 
was  still  a  boy;  but  he  could  not  now  submit  to  the 
ordeal  of  a  confession  of  his  backsliding.  His  pride 
of  a  man  who  was  one  day  to  be  a  financial  success 
was  too  great  to  bear  the  public  avowal  of  guilt,  the 
open  expression  of  deep  personal  emotion;  and  the 


380      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

secretiveness  into  which  he  had  been  forced  in  child- 
hood would  not  permit  him  ever  to  answer  those 
piercingly  intimate  questions  which,  he  was  aware, 
a  minister  privately  directed  at  those  who  came  to 
him  for  spiritual  encouragement. 

Yet,  in  his  present  state,  Dan  knew  that  something 
was  wrong  with  him.  What  was  it? 

The  answer  was  obvious:  his  stumbling  block  was 
Woman. 

It  was  useless  for  him,  in  this  period  of  reaction, 
to  argue  that  he  had  but  done  what  most  men  do. 
If  there  was  to  be  consolation  in  that  thought,  he 
must  convince  himself  that  what  most  men  do  is  at 
least  not  wrong,  and  to  this  mental  attitude  he  dared 
not  yet  return.  Nor  could  he,  on  the  other  hand, 
assure  himself  that  he  would  resist  temptation.  There 
appeared  to  be  only  one  safe  course :  he  must  legiti- 
matize his  inclinations. 

At  that,  the  thought  of  Judith  came  to  him,  and 
no  sooner  had  it  come  than  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  as 
he  understood  the  term,  vanished,  and  left  in  its  place 
what  he  took  to  be  pure  romance.  The  thought  of 
her,  he  immediately  declared,  had  never  really  de- 
serted him.  Here  was  not  only  purity  that  would 
purify  him;  here  was  his  old  ideal. 

He  remembered  their  boy  and  girl  companionship, 
inextricably  interwoven  with  a  time  when  he  was  so 
Fhiuch  less  soiled  than  he  now  was  that  he  appeared,  in 
the  retrospect,  spotless.  He  remembered  her  on 
her  way  from  school.  He  remembered  her,  bare- 
foot, tramping  the  dusty  country  roads  beside  him. 
He  remembered  again  their  evening  on  the  Susque- 
hanna  when  the  moonlight  danced  above  the  water 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      381 

and  the  liquid  waste  from  the  furnace  shone  red 
against  the  distant  hills.  How  could  he  then  have 
let  her  go?  How  could  he  now  have  failed  to  see 
how  good  and  yet  how  broad  she  was,  and  how  sym- 
pathetically understanding  and  forgiving.  His  mind's 
eye  saw  her  fine  face.  It  saw  her  full  figure  as  she 
now  was;  her  eager  lips;  the  color  that,  with  argu- 
ment, came  into  her  dusky  cheek.  It  recalled  little 
details :  how  the  hair  curled  upon  her  neck  and  how 
the  long  lashes  touched  her  cheek.  She  had  been 
twilight  and  dawn  and  youth  to  him;  she  had  been 
romance,  music,  tenderness.  She  was  again ;  and  these 
things  he  needed  now  more  than  he  had  once  needed 
them.  Dan  was  in  love. 

He  had  been  foolish  to  quarrel  with  her,  but  he 
felt  certain  of  her  pardon.  That  was  much.  Yet  did 
she  care  enough  for  him  to  marry  him?  He  doubted 
it,  and  he  knew  that,  if  he  was  ever  to  go  into  busi- 
ness for  himself,  he  must  not  marry  until  he  should 
know  how  much  he  might  count  on  from  his  father's 
estate. 

§  4.  Still,  the  next  best  thing  to  finding  is  seek- 
ing, and  Dan,  in  the  few  days  following,  saw  much 
of  Judith. 

What  did  he  say  to  her?  There  is  none  so  stupid 
as  the  man  that  wants  to  woo  and  dares  not:  after 
she  had  fojgiven  him  for  his  quarrel  with  her,  Dan's 
conversation  was  compact  of  .sly  advances  and  head- 
long retreats.  He  was  lured  by  the  chasm  of  avowal. 
He  would  crawl  up  to  it,  a  step  at  a  time;  he  would 
gingerly  stretch  his  neck  over  the  edge;  and  then  he 
would  draw  back  in  dismay. 


382      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Do  you  remember  the  time  we  ran  a  race?  "  he ; 
one  evening  asked  her. 

They  were  in  the  parlor  of  her  lodging-house  and 
she  was  adjusting  her  hat  and  gloves  before  they 
started  for  the  theater. 

"  I  remember  that  I  won  it,"  she  said. 

"  Only  because  I  hurt  my  foot,"  said  Dan.  "  I 
won  on  a  fair  trial.  That  was  the  first  time  we  ever 
spoke  to  each  other,  wasn't  it,  Judith?  " 

"  I  think  so;  but  you  had  been  staring  at  me  for 
days  and  days." 

"  Oh,  yes;  but  you  had  been  staring  at  me, 
too." 

"  Had  I?  Then  it  was  not  because  I  thought  you 
handsome;  be  sure  of  that." 

"What  did  you  think  of  me?" 

She  smiled.  She  seemed  very  happy  during  this 
period  of  their  association. 

"  I  suppose  you  thought  me  spindle-legged,  and  I 
was,"  she  said. 

"  I  didn't  think  it,  and  you  weren't !  " 

"  Indeed  I  was;  and  as  for  you Shall  I  tell 

you  what  most  impressed  me  about  you?  " 

"  Do." 

"  You're  sure  you  want  to  hear?  " 

"  Please." 

"  The  thing  that  most  forcibly  struck  me  about 
you  was  the  fascinating  hole  that  had  been  left  by 
the  exit  of  one  of  your  milk-teeth." 

"Not  at  all,"  said  iDan.  "That's  impossible. 
You've  got  me  mixed  with  a  younger  rival.  I  had 
all  of  my  second  teeth  ever  and  ever  so  long  before 
that  time." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      383 

"  Have  you  got  your  wisdom-teeth  now?  "  she  in- 
quired. 

Dan  was  approaching  the  edge  of  the  chasm. 

"  I  must  have  had  them  that  evening  when  we 
rowed  out  to  the  island,"  said  he.  "  I  mean  the 
evening  just  after  I'd  graduated  from  the  high-school. 
You  know  the  one  I  mean." 

"  Yes,"  said  Judith.    "Why?" 

"  Because — because  I  wanted  to  tell  you  that  I 
loved  you." 

She  was  pulling  down  the  fingers  of  a  glove.  She 
gave  him  a  quick  brown  glance;  then  returned  her 
attention  to  her  glove. 

"  You  had  a  narrow  escape,"  she  said. 

"  What  from?  "  asked  Dan. 

She  was  still  busy  with  the  glove. 

"  From  being  accepted,  I  suppose,  and  drawn  into 
a  runaway  marriage." 

"  Well,"  said  Dan,  his  eyes  on  her  lowered  head 
and  on  the  mounting  color  in  the  bit  of  her  cheek  that 
was  revealed  to  him,  "  would  that  have  been  so 
bad?" 

"  For  two  children?  "  she  took  him  up.  "  For  a 
boy  and  girl?"  Having  secured  the  glove,  she  re, 
garded  the  result.  "  Besides,"  she  said,  "  even 
among  grown  people,  nobody  marries  that  has  a 
sense  of  humor." 

By  which  speech  Dan  was  again  made  aware  of  his 
danger  and  ran  away  from  the  chasm. 


XXIV 

SPEECH   intoxicates,   but  thought   sobers,    and 
Dan    soon    had    occasion    for    some    sobering 
thought:  his  father's  estate  was  at  last  settled, 
and  the  settlement  displayed  a  woeful  shrinkage  of 
values.    What,  as  Dan  reflected,  had  once  happened 
to  the  Kents,  had  now  happened  to  the  Barneses. 

It  was  shown  that  the  shop  in  Elm  Avenue  had  for 
several  years  been  running  at  a  loss,  which  ate  much 
of  its  owner's  capital,  and  the  Doncaster  firm  bought 
it  for  an  insignificant  sum.  Indeed,  that  the  father 
could  have  hoped  that  Dan  might  reestablish  the 
business  disclosed  how  Tom's  mind  had  weakened 
with  his  body.  Mr.  Barnes  had  owned  several  houses 
in  Americus,  but  in  Americus  houses  stood  empty  by 
the  score,  and  many  of  Tom's  were  occupied  by  noth- 
ing but  mortgages  secured  during  the  declining  days 
of  the  shop.  There  remained  some  bonds  of  a  fixed 
value,  some  mildly  fluctuating  stock,  and  the  rent 
from  the  place  in  Oak  Street.  These,  together  with 
the  money  received  for  the  shop,  were  enough  to  as- 
sure Mrs.  Barnes  a  comfortable  living  in  a  town  like 
Americus;  but  Dan  felt  that  he  must  help  her  from 
his  share  and  there  was  nothing  left  on  which  he 
could  afford  to  marry. 

This  opposition  seemed  unsurmountable.  It  could, 
at  all  events,  be  surmounted  only  by  the  changing 
fortunes  of  time,  and  because  it  was  so  great  Dan 
rebelled  the  more  strongly  against  it. 

384 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      385 

§  2.  On  an  evening  in  June  he  was  walking  w'ith 
Judith  in  Central  Park.  He  spoEe  in  wide  circles, 
yet  in  circles  that  slowly  narrowed  toward  the  center 
about  which  his  mind  now  constantly  revolved.  He 
spoke  of  everything  but  the  thing  of  which  she  prob- 
ably wanted  him  to  speak;  too  long  and  too  much  of 
insurance  and  its  statistics,  of  their  acquaintances,  of 
nothing. 

They  had  dined  at  Madge's  club,  the  guests  of 
Madge  and  Harold,  where  the  two  men  were,  as 
usual,  the  butts  of  their  companions.  For  some  time 
after  Judith  and  Dan  entered  the  Park,  they  con- 
tinued the  conversation  of  the  hosts  that  they  had 
left  behind  them. 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  so  object  to  all  my  opin- 
ions," said  Dan. 

Judith  sighed  the  sigh  of  the  baffled  apostle. 

"  In  that  case,"  she  rejoined,  "  every  word  that  I 
have  uttered  for  the  past  half-hour  has  been  thrown 
away." 

"It's  not  that,"  said  Dan;  "  it's  that  you  make 
me  feel  we  can  never  get  along  together." 

"  But  we  do  get  along,"  said  Judith.  "  I  thought 
that  we  got  along  quite  splendidly.  Differing  opin- 
ions are  the  firmest  foundation  for  real  friendship." 

She  was  dressed  in  a  suit  of  golden  brown,  the 
jacket  open  to  the  fresh  evening  breeze.  The  color 
set  off  to  their  best  advantage  her  tinged  cheeks,  her 
brilliant  eyes,  and  the  luxury  of  her  wonderful  hair. 

"  Friendship !  "  cried  Dan,  scornfully. 

"  Why,"  Judith  supplemented,  "  if  we  hadn't  dif- 
fering opinions  to  quarrel  over,  you  and  I,  what 
should  we  find  to  talk  about?  " 


386       THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

"  Oh,"  said  Dan,  in  whom  her  beauty  wrought  a 
divine  impatience,  "  you  know  what  I  mean." 

Apparently,  however,  she  did  not. 

"  What  do  you  mean?  "  she  challenged. 

"  I  mean •"  Dan  saw  the  wraith  of  his  slim 

pocketbook  and  brought  up  short.  Then  he  looked 
at  her  again,  and  again  approached  the  great  sub- 
ject. "  Are  you  happy  the  way  you're  living  now?  " 

"  How  could  I  be?  I  am  living  in  a  boarding- 
house.  I  like  privacy,  and  in  a  boarding-house 
everyone's  avocation  is  the  effort  to  discover  all  about 
one's  house-mates.  You  ought  to  know  by  this  time 
how  thoroughly  I  believe  in  everyone's  right  to  guard 
his  individuality  against  trespass." 

He  did  know.  So  far  as  his  own  case  was  con- 
cerned, he  approved.  Yet  he  recollected  something 
that  he  had,  at  dinner,  observed  in  the  relation  be- 
tween Madge  and  Harold. 

"  Madge  and  Harold  don't  seem  to  agree  with 
you,"  said  Dan.  "  They  seem  to  keep  nothing  from 
each  other." 

"  Dan,"  Judith  answered,  "  those  two  are  bound 
to  be  happy  because  they  so  well  understand  each 
other  that  they  can  keep  everything  from  each  other." 

"  Oh,  come  now,"  protested  Dan,  "  Madge  keeps 
nothing  from  anybody!  " 

"  For  the  good  reason  that  she  has  nothing  to 
keep;  and  Harold  understands  it." 

"  But  Harold  doesn't  tell  her  anything  about  him- 
self that  he  thinks  would  worry  her." 

"  For  the  good  reason  that  she  has  guessed  it  all 
already;  and  Harold  understands  that.  His  truth- 
fulness is  an  attribute ;  hers  was  acquired." 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      387 

They  walked  on  in  silence,  while  the  night  deep- 
ened and  the  lamps  came  out. 

Dan  trembled  from  the  current  of  that  impulse 
which  was  shooting  through  his  veins.  He  loved  her, 
and  yet  he  felt  hopelessly  unworthy  of  her.  He 
wanted  her  to  know  all  the  wrong  that  he  had  done 
before  he  should  tell  her  that  he  loved  her.  More 
than  once  she  had  prevented  him  from  confessing  his 
errors,  but  he  was  not  sure  that  the  sweeping  assump- 
tions with  which  she  used  to  stop  him  really  implied 
the  knowledge  of  his  misdeeds  that  he  desired  her  to 
have.  She  must  know  the  worst  of  him,  partly  that 
he  might  be  protected  against  any  evil  gossip  of  his 
earlier  life  that  might  later  arise,  and  partly,  that  he 
might  be  sure  that  what  she  loved  was  not  some 
image  of  her  own  making,  but  his  real  self.  She  must 
know  the  worst  of  him  and  then,  from  her  holy,  clear- 
seeing  purity,  forgive  him  all. 

"  Listen,  Judith,"  he  presently  said:  "  I  don't  know 
what's  the  right  and  wrong  of  your  ideas  of  a  per- 
son's individuality,  but  I  want  you  to  understand  all 
about  me.  I  want  you  to  understand  that  I've  been 
pretty  free." 

There  was  a  touch  of  impatience  in  her  voice  as  she 
answered : 

"  But  I  do  understand  that.  I  have  understood 
it  ever  since  we  met  again  here  in  New  York." 

"  In  a  general  way,  perhaps  you  have;  but  do  you 
know  exactly  what  it  all  means?  " 

"  Of  course  I  know;  I  know  life." 

"  You  wouldn't  think  the  less  of  me  if  you  ever 
heard — heard  things?  " 
N     "  The  only  new  things  that  I  could  hear  would  be 


388      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

names  and  dates.  Good  and  evil  aren't  a  question 
of  names  and  dates." 

"  But  I've  been  evil,  Judith." 

They  had  reached  a  bench  on  a  little  knoll  over- 
looking a  clearing.  Through  the  treetops  beyond  the 
clearing  the  moon  was  rising.  They  sat  on  the  bench. 

"  No,"  said  Judith,  "  I  don't  think  that  you  have 
been  evil." 

"  I  have !  "  he  miserably  insisted. 

"  Foolish,  perhaps,"  said  Judith;  "  ignorant.  But 
your  foolishness  and  your  ignorance  were  the  fault 
of  those  who  started  you  wrong.  Most  of  us  were 
started  wrong:  once  we  learn  better,  we  don't  have 
to  keep  on  in  our  folly." 

"  Do  you  mean,"  he  asked,  "  that  you  don't  think 
these  things  I've  done  are  wrong — wrong  in  them- 
selves?" 

She  crossed  a  knee  and  clasped  her  hands  about  it. 
She  spoke  as  one  speaks  that  instructs  a  child. 

"  I  mean,"  she  answered,  "  that  we  all  make  too 
much  of  the  thing  that  you  are  talking  about.  It 
wasn't  always  considered  a  wrong.  It  was  not  con- 
sidered a  wrong  until  individuals  began  to  have  in- 
dividual property,  and  each  individual  wanted  to 
leave  his  property  to  his  own  child.  Then  it  became 
wrong  for  a  man's  wife  to  run  the  risk  of  having 
a  child  the  identity  of  whose  father  she  couldn't  be 
certain  of.  In  the  same  way,  it  became  wrong  for 
her  husband  to  put  another  man's  wife  in  the  position 
where  she  would  be  uncertain.  This  set  a  value  on 
what  we  now  call  fidelity,  and  fidelity  gradually  put 
a  value  on  virginity  in  unmarried  women.  Now, 
by  a  natural  growth,  the  tendency  is  to  set  the  same 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      389 

value  on  virginity  in  unmarried  men.  I  don't  say  that 
those  values  are  mistaken;  I  say  only  that  they  are 
exaggerated. " 

It  was  precisely  such  a  theory  as  he  had  for  so 
long  wanted  to  hear  set  forth.  It  was  exactly  the 
argument  to  which  the  entire  training  of  his  child- 
hood, opposed  to  this,  had,  by  the  silence  of  its  op- 
position, shaped  him  and  made  him  amenable.  Here 
was  no  spiritual  abjectness  such  as  would  be  required 
by  the  church.  Here  was  no  need  for  the  shamed 
baring  of  his  inmost  recollections.  Here  were  logic 
and  free  salvation ;  here  were  at  once  the  saving  of 
his  pride  and  the  salving  of  his  conscience;  here  was 
the  door  of  escape. 

"  But  suppose,"  he  said,  bringing  forward  his  last 
doubt — "  suppose  a  fellow  wanted  to  marry?  " 

"  People's  pasts,"  said  Judith,  "  belong  to  the  peo- 
ple themselves.  All  our  time  is  ours  to  give,  so  that, 
at  most,  the  only  persons  that  can  share  our  pasts  are 
the  persons  that  actually  did  share  them.  If  you 
divided  your  past  with  other  persons,  you  have  no 
right  to  take  back  your  gift;  you  have  no  right  to 
hand  the  past  over  to  the  person  you  mean  to 
marry." 

"  But  the  future?  "  asked  Dan. 

"That  must  be  like  all  the  rest  of  our  time:  it 
belongs  to  whatever  person  we  give  it  to.  If  a  man 
and  woman  marry,  they  agree  to  share  their  futures 
so  long  as  they  are  married.  If  they  agree  on  what 
is  called  fidelity,  they  must  be  faithful.  They  have 
a  claim  on  each  other's  present  and  future,  but  they 
can't  have  a  claim  on  each  other's  pasts." 

To  steady. himself,  Dan  tried  to  light  a  cigarette, 


390      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

but  his  hand  shook  and  the  match  was  extinguished. 
He  threw  both  match  and  cigarette  away. 

"  Then  if  a  man  wanted  to  marry  you,"  he  said. 
"  you  wouldn't  want  to  know 

"  I  should  have  no  right  to  know." 

"  But  wouldn't  you  want  to?  " 

"  I  should  know  in  a  general  way,  because  I  know 
the  world;  but  the  details  I  shouldn't  want  to  know." 

He  wet  his  lips  and,  in  the  pause  that  ensued, 
beheld  again  the  wraith  of  his  small  means.  Mar- 
riage would  impose  poverty;  it  would  mean  failure. 
There  was  something  in  Judith  that  he  could  not 
account  for,  but  that  drew  him  to  her  as  the  magnet 
draws  the  steel.  There  was  in  her  a  quality  that  was 
the  inevitable  complement  of  the  quality  long  since 
made  most  dominant  in  him.  What  it  was  he  did 
not  know  and,  because  he  did  not  know,  he  struggled 
against  it  a  little  longer. 

For  a  time  he  tried  to  talk  of  other  things;  but 
always  the  talk  turned  toward  the  thing  that  was  as 
plain  as  if  spread  on  the  clearing  at  their  feet.  He 
advanced  and  retreated.  He  came  toward  it  from 
one  direction,  fell  back,  and  then  came  toward  it  from 
another.  At  last,  and  apropos  of  nothing,  he  rushed 
upon  it. 

"  Judith,"  he  asked,  "  what — just  what  do  you 
think  of  me?  " 

"  I  think,"  she  smiled,  "  that  you  are  a  young  man 
of  whom  something  better  than  a  mere  business  suc- 
cess might  still  be  made." 

"Not  that,"  said  Dan;  "I  mean,  what  do  you 
think  of  me  for  what  I've  done?  " 

"  I  have  told  you.    Such  things  are  partly  the  fault 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      391 

of  our  nature,  if  you  consider  it  a  fault;  partly  the 
fault  of  our  finances,  and  partly  the  fault  of  our  up- 
bringing. Nowadays  it  is  the  custom  to  bring  up 
children  wrongly.  I'm  sure  I  was  brought  up 
wrongly." 

He  looked  into  her  splendidly  sympathetic  eyes. 
"  You  ?  "  he  laughed.    "  Well,  scarcely !  " 
'  Yes,  I  was.    I  am  quite  in  earnest  about  that." 
"  At  any  rate,"  said  Dan,  "  you  have  the  goodness 
not  to  want  to  know  all  about  all  the  women  that 
I  have  had  to  do  with." 

She  put  her  hand  upon  his  quivering  arm. 
"Listen,"    she   said;    "I    have   been    made   love 

"  Of  course  you  have,"  he  interrupted,  as  he  drank 
her  beauty. 

"  But  is  there  any  reason,"  she  persisted,  "  why 
I  should  tell  any  other  man,  even  the  man  that  I 
married,  all  about  that?  " 

"  Oh,  but,"  he  objected,  "  that's  different!  " 

"  It  is  not,"  she  insisted.  "  If  it  is  right  for  the 
wife  to  know  all  about  her  husband,  it  is  right  for 
the  husband  to  know  all  about  his  wife.  What  sort 
of  affairs  the  man's  were,  or  what  sort  the  woman's 
were,  wouldn't  matter:  if  one  should  know,  so  should 
the  other.  Only,  you  see,  I  am  quite  certain  that,  be- 
yond a  general  knowledge,  neither  has  any  rights." 

It  was  more  of  that  logic  which  most  appealed  to 
him.  He'  was  certain  that  she  was  right,  that  the 
difference  between  being  loved  as  she  had  been  and 
seeking  women  as  he  had  sought  them  was,  when  it 
came  to  confessions  between  a  pair  that  were  to 
marry,  of  equal  unimportance.  But  that  she,  who  was 


392      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

so  pure,  should  see  this,  filled  him  with  a  sacred  won- 
der, a  tender  awe,  of  her. 

"  Well,"  he  gulped,  "  if  you  wouldn't  want  a  full 
confession  from  the  man  you  were  to  marry,  what 
would  you  want  of  him?  " 

She  looked  up,  her  brown  eyes  calm.  The  moon 
had  cleared  the  treetops;  its  light  lay  on  the  grass 
like  snow,  and  Dan  could  see  every  quiver  of  her  wist- 
ful face. 

"  I  should  want/'  she  said  slowly,  "  to  know  only 
that  the  man  I  married  would,  from  the  day  he  mar- 
ried me,  be  my  man." 

His  arm  had  slipped  along  the  back  of  the  bench 
behind  her,  but  he  dared  not  yet  touch  her.  He 
dared  only  to  lean  closer  and  lower  his  face  toward 
hers. 

"  Judith,"  he  said,  "  that's  what  I'll  be— and  that's 
what  I  brought  you  out  here  to  say,  I  guess :  only, 
until  now,  I  hadn't  got  up  my  nerve  to  say  it." 

She  turned  her  face  away  from  him,  but  in  her 
throat  a  single  pulse  visibly  rose  and  fell. 

"  I — I  love  you,  Judith,"  he  whispered  hoarsely, 
and  waited  for  an  infinite  minute. 

At  last  she  spoke,  her  face  still  turned  away. 

"  We  are  very  much  alike,  after  all,  you  and  I," 
she  said. 

But  Dan  thought  of  his  sins. 

"  Don't  pretend  that  you  are  like  me!  "  he  pleaded. 

"  I  am,"  she  answered.  She  turned  and  gave  him 
the  full  glory  of  her  face.  "  You  see,  I  love  you, 


too." 


His  arm  closed  about  her,  and  their  lips  touched. 
"  We'll  be  poor,"  he  said  presently. 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      393 

"  As  if  that  mattered,"  said  Judith. 

"  And  you  said  that  nobody  with  a  sense  of  humor 
ever  married,  Judith." 

"  You  never  had  one,  dear,  and  I  lost  mine  when 
you  kissed  me.  Kiss  me  again." 

She  put  her  face  to  his,  and  then : 

"  I  think  I  am  a  strong  woman  now,"  she  said, 
"  though  I  have  sometimes  been  lonely,  and  yet, 
strong  or  weak,  a  man  needs  a  woman  and  a  woman 
a  man.  Will — will  you  be  good  to  me,  Dan?  " 

And  Dan  seized  her  in  his  arms  and  lightly  and 
gratefully  took  the  vow. 

They  were  certainly  in  love,  for  they  were  silent 
and  did  not  know  that  they  were  silent,  while  all  the 
while,  shut  from  them  by  only  a  frail  barrier  of  trees, 
throbbed  the  City:  death  and  birth,  success  and  fail- 
ure, struggle  upon  struggle;  electric  hurry  on  the 
street,  over  the  street,  under  the  street;  rushing  men 
and  women  straining  from  somewhere  to  somewhere ; 
jostling  people,  crying  venders;  rattling  carts,  rattling 
wagons;  cabs  and  motors;  motion  and  unrest  forever 
and  endless. 


XXV 

THERE  was  to  be  no  delay.  Dan,  deeply  in 
love,  anxious. for  the  complete  attainment  of^ 
his  old  ideals  and  urged  by  his  new  realization 
of  the  direction  in  which  his  moral  safety  lay,  was 
turned  from  his  usual  observance  of  convention:  he 
would  not  hear  of  a  long  engagement,  and  Judith  at 
last  agreed  to  his  plans.  They  would  marry  as  soon 
as  they  could  prepare  for  marriage,  and  they  could 
prepare  within  a  month.  This  they  decided  upon 
after  what  seemed  to  them  a  properly  lengthy  con- 
sideration :  they  considered  the  question  for  fully  half 
an  hour. 

Dan,  though  in  no  mind  for  postponement,  did  not 
forget  economics.  He  would  be  by  no  means  well- 
to-do,  but,  even  taking  into  account  the  cessation  of 
his  salary,  there  remained  the  facts,  demonstrable  to 
himself,  that  he  was  becoming  a  good  insurance-so- 
licitor, and  that  immediate  commissions  and  already 
secured  "  futures  "  should  adequately  suffice  for  their 
present  everyday  support. 

Then  trouble  arose  from  a  quarter  from  which  Dan 
had  expected  none :  Judith  insisted  that  she  would,  of 
course,  continue  her  newspaper-work. 

"  Of  course  you  won't !  "  flashed  Dan. 

"  But  I  will,"  she  protested.  "  It  never  occurred 
to  me  that  you  would  object  to  that." 

"  And  it  never  occurred  to  me,"  said  her  lover, 
"  that  you'd  want  to  do  it" 

394 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      395 

"  I  must  do  it." 

Dan's  face  darkened. 

"  I  know,"  he  sullenly  began,  "  that  I'm  not  offer- 
ing you  much  of  a  home " 

"  Oh,  that's  not  it!"  She  put  an  interrupting 
hand  upon  his.  "  That's  not  it  at  all.  If  you  were 
rich,  I  would  still  expect  to  earn  my  own  living." 

'*  That's  nonsense,"  said  Dan. 

"  It's  right,"  said  Judith. 

He  had,  from  his  many  talks  with  her,  a  dim 
vision  of  her  point  of  view,  but  he  brought  out  his 
great  argument: 

"  What  would  people  think?  " 

She  looked  at  him,  her  face  upturned,  her  eyes 
wistful. 

"  Do  you  care  about  that?  "  she  asked. 

"  We  have  to." 

"  No,  dear,  it's  what  we  think  that  matters.  We 
must  be  doing  what  we  think  is  right." 

"  Well,  I  don't  think  this  is,  Judith." 

"  But  I  do  think  so.  You  wouldn't  try  to  force 
me  to  act  against  my  convictions,  would  you?  " 

"  Would  you  force  me  to  act  against  mine?" 

They  fought  it  out.  He  told  her  that  a  woman's 
place  is  in  the  home,  and  she  told  him  that,  in  any 
event,  her  place  was  not  in  the  home  until  the  home 
developed  enough  duties  to  keep  her  busy  there.  He 
argued  that  his  friends  would  think  ill  of  him,  and 
she  replied  that  friends  who  would  think  ill  of  him 
for  such  a  cause  were  not  worth  having.  He  ap- 
pealed to  her  love  for  him,  and  she  appealed  to  his 
love  for  her.  And  in  the  end,  Judith  won. 

"  All  right,"  Dan  reluctantly  conceded,  for  he  was 


396      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

very  much  in  love,  "  we'll  try  it  for  a  while  anyhow." 

In  his  heart  he  was  saying: 

"  With  all  her  wisdom,  this  dear  girl  is  just  like 
other  girls  about  whatever  is  a  hobby.  Other  girls' 
hobbies  would  be  directly  opposed  to  Judith's,  but 
every  girl  holds  tight  to  one  hobby  or  another. 
They've  never  really  outgrown  their  dolls.  They're 
just  babies  grown  big.  Judith  shall  have  her 
way  for  a  while.  I  can  grant  that,  because,  soon 
enough,  she'll  of  course  have  a  real  baby  of  our  own 
to  take  care  of,  and  even  she  won't  have  any  doubts 
about  where  her  duty  lies  then." 

§  2.  When  he  had  left  her  that  night  at  her 
boarding-house  door,  and  was  walking  to  his  lodgings 
through  the  lights  and  crowd  of  Broadway,  he 
thought  of  her  with  a  joyful  pride;  and  he  thought 
without  regret  of  his  now  necessarily  discarded  plans 
for  a  great  financial  triumph. 

He  remembered  how  he  had  felt  about  the  City. 
He  remembered  how  he  had  wanted  to  be  a  part  of 
it  and  to  conquer  it.  He  remembered  how  he  had 
regarded  it  as  the  real  school  of  life,  the  battle-field 
on  which  he  must  somehow  win  his  spurs ;  the  market- 
place wherein  he  would  achieve  success  and  acquire 


"  means." 


Well,  all  that  was  over.  Fortune  might  still  some 
day  be  as  favorable  to  him  in  the  matter  of  money  as 
it  now  was  in  the  matter  of  love;  but  he  knew  that 
he  was  assuming  responsibilities  certain  heavily  to 
handicap  him  in  any  struggle  in  which  luck  should  be 
against  him.  Allowing  for  Judith's  ability  to  support 
herself  for  a  short  while,  he  knew  that  her  self-sup- 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      397 

port  must  end  when  children  began,  and  he  wanted 
children.  Nothing  but  the  unexpected  would  ever 
make  him  a  rich  man.  He  had  been  taught  to  win 
his  own  way,  to  deserve  commercial  respect,  to  choke 
all  grumbling  in  his  throat,  to  be  obedient  to  author- 
ity and  to  reverence  it;  and  he  now  saw  that,  though 
he  might  obey  all  these  teachings,  he  could  scarcely 
hope  to  reach  the  destination  to  which  he  had  been 
assured  that  they  would  infalliby  lead.  Yet  he  was 
able  to  put  aside  all  his  old  ideals  of  gaining  wealth. 
A  woman  had  made  this  possible. 

He  caught  a  glimpse  of  himself  in  the  mirror  that 
stood  at  the  back  of  a  lighted  shop-window. 

"  This,"  he  thought,  "  is  the  man  that  Judith  Kent 
\s  going  to  marry." 

He  had  seen  a  large-framed,  upstanding,  broad- 
shouldered  man,  dressed  in  a  manner  scrupulously 
"  correct,"  with  a  good-natured  face  that  gave  no 
hint  of  the  degraded  soul  that  its  owner  had  some- 
times thought  directed  him.  His  eyes  were  blue  and 
his  hair  brown.  His  manner  was  the  manner  of  his 
age  and  his  environment.  Dan  was  like  any  one  of 
hundreds  of  the  men  about  him. 

Once  more  he  comforted  himself  with  the  thought 
that,  if  he  had  been  through  much,  he  had,  after 
all,  been  through  no  more  than  most  of  his  fel- 
lows. During  his  long  bondage  to  Cora  and  his  brief 
infatuation  for  Nina  Asche,  he  had  felt  himself  ex- 
alted above  the  common  experience  of  mankind,  be- 
lieved his  sensations  different,  considered  them  worthy 
of  exceptions  to  the  hard  and  fast  rules.  An  average 
man,  who  would  live  his  life  and  die  his  death  as 
unnoticed  as  another,  it  had  nevertheless  not  occurred 


398      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

to  him  that  any  of  the  young  fellows  whom  he  knew 
could  then  feel  as  he  felt,  that  Peter  Asche,  or  Gideon 
Giddey,  or  Mr.  O'Neill  could  ever  in  the  past  have 
been  what  he  then  was.  But  now  love  gave  him  a 
clearer  vision,  albeit  still  imperfect.  Horrid  as  were 
his  early  habits,  sordid  as  were  his  intimacies  with 
Irma,  with  the  girls  of  the  street,  even  absurd  as  had 
seemed  his  attachment  to  Pauline  Riggs,  he  saw  them 
all  as  but  the  experiences  common  to  his  sex.  He 
recalled  that  it  was  Judith's  calm  wisdom  that  had 
confirmed  him  in  this  belief;  he  loved  her  the  more 
because  of  this  wisdom,  and  he  decided  that,  whatever 
his  past  had  been,  it  was  at  last  ended.  He  had 
done  with  it.  If  he  had  been  wrong,  he  had  also 
been  punished,  the  debt  was  paid.  It  was  as  if  there 
were  dawning  for  him  a  wonderful  new  life,  un- 
troubled, secure.  He  had  won  his  heart's  clean  de- 
sire and  he  was  about  to  "  settle  down." 

That  sense  of  loss  which  he  had  suffered  after  the 
long-ago  evening  with  Irma  in  the  yard  behind  the 
Doreamus  house  in  Americus  had  never  been  alto- 
gether absent;  but  now  it  left  him.  His  earlier 
dreams  were  all  returned.  He  saw  that,  throughout 
his  life,  he  had  wanted  a  "  good  "  woman.  He  did 
not  understand  the  double  tyranny  of  his  training 
that  had  made  his  mind  want  purity  and  his  body 
want  purity's  antithesis :  that  key  to  the  entire  secret 
of  his  existence  was  neither  now  nor  later  vouch- 
safed him.  But  he  recalled  his  boyish  ideals;  he 
recalled  how,  throughout  his  schoolboy-lusts  in  Amer- 
icus, the  thought  of  Judith  had  remained  aloof  from 
his  lower  desires  and  above  them;  he  recalled  how 
he  had,  years  later,  felt  Judith's  almost  occult  appeal 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      399 

to  him  before  his  silly  quarrel  with  her  about  Twigg, 
and,  in  a  flash  which  told  him  that  her  appeal  lay  in 
her  combined  goodness  and  broad-mindedness,  he  now 
again  thanked  God  for  her. 

§  3.  Certain  mental  states  are  as  readily  trans- 
mitted as  the  most  readily  transmissible  physical  dis- 
eases, and  this  condition  of  Dan's  mind  affected 
Harold,  long  predisposed,  even  before  Dan  had  thor- 
oughly awakened  to  his  own  state.  On  the  very  even- 
ing when  Dan  and  Judith,  after  the  dinner  at  the 
club,  were  having  their  portentous  conversation  in 
Central  Park,  Harold,  walking  slowly  home  with 
Madge,  was  dangerously  approaching  a  similar  con- 
versation with  his  companion. 

"Those  two,"  said  he,  thus  lucidly  referring  to 
the  pair  that  had  just  been  his  guests,  "  are  going 
to  conclude  the  world-without-end  bargain." 

"  You  mean,"  asked  Madge,  "  that  they  will 
marry?  " 

"  Quick,"  said  Harold.  He  looked  thoughtfully 
at  the  sky.  "  And  plenty,"  he  presently  added. 

"Well?"  said  Madge. 

Harold  did  not  reply. 

"  Do  you  approve?  "  she  inquired. 

"  Of  course." 

"  I  thought  you  never  cared  much  about  Judith." 

"  Oh,"  Harold  laughed,  "  that  was  because  she 
never  cared  much  about  me." 

"  Does  she  care  much  about  you  now?"  Madge 
pressed. 

"  Now,"  said  Harold,  "  doesn't  much  matter. 
You  see,  you've  done  a  lot  for  me,  and  among  other 


400      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

things  you've  made  it  possible  for  me  to  discern  that 
a  woman  can  be  fine  even  if  she  fails  to  appreciate 
a  rising  young  lawyer  of  Lawnhurst." 

For  the  instant  Madge  caught  his  mood: 

"Any  woman?" 

"  Almost  any  woman,"  Harold  rapidly  amended. 
Then  he  doubled  on  his  track.  "  Do  you  approve 
of  the  match,  Madge?  " 

"I?    It's  not  my  affair." 

"  Nor  mine;  and  yet  you  asked  my  opinion." 

"  Well,  then — yes.  But  with  all  his  good  nature 
and  sincerity,  Dan  is  terribly  fixed  in  his  fundamental 
ideas.  I  don't  see  how  he  is  ever  to  change  them. 
Still,  Judith  sees  him  with  such  glowing  eyes  and  she 
can  forgive  so  much." 

"That's  all  well  enough;  but  what  about  Judith's 
fixed  opinions?  " 

"  Judith  is  splendid." 

"  Right.    So  you  do  approve  of  the  marriage?  " 

"  Yes.     Why  do  you  persist  about  it?  " 

"  Because,"  smiled  Harold,  snapping  the  trap  that 
he  had  set  for  her,  "you  once  intimated  to  me  that 
you  didn't  approve  of  any  marriage  at  all." 

Madge's  bow-shaped  mouth  trembled  with  amuse- 
ment. 

"  I  was  speaking  generally,"  she  said. 

"  You  were  speaking,"  said  Harold,  "  of  yourself." 
He  looked  at  her  squarely.  "  You  were  speaking  of 
us." 

She  met  him  with  her  direct  gray  gaze. 

"  We  should  never  agree  on  any  subject  in  the 
world." 

But  he  refused  that. 


[ 
v 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      401 

"  We  would/'  he  declared.  "  I'd  agree  to  any- 
thing. The  fact  that  you  believed  in  a  thing  would 
be  proof  enough  for  me  of  its  truth  and  value." 

"  Do  you  think  that  an  agreement  based  on  such 
grounds  could  be  worth  while?"  she  asked.  "  You 
must  agree  because  the  thing  is  right  and  not  because 
I  think  it  is  right." 

"  Even  " — he  put  it  to  her  frankly — "  about  the 
formality  of  a  wedding?  " 

She  took  the  hand  that  hung  at  his  side. 

"  Listen,"  she  said:  "  we  are  still  both  very  young; 
we  are  still  both  a  good  deal  younger  than  Judith 
and  the  man  she  loves.  We  must  grow  and  we  must 
know  each  other  better.  Wait.  We  must  wait  for 
a  few  years;  and  then,  if  each  turns  out  to  be  what 
the  other  wants " 

"  And  then,"  asked  Harold,  tremendously  insistent 
for  a  man  that,  a  moment  since,  was  promising  mental 
obedience,  "  about  that  formality?  " 

"  Well,  then,"  sighed  Madge,  "  it  wouldn't  be  fair 
of  me  not  to  make  some  concession  to  your  opinions, 
would  it?  " 

§  4.  And  the  disease  called  Love  continued  in  the 
air.  Judith  sought  out  Madge  and  told  of  the  ap- 
proaching wedding,  and  Madge  replied  by  her  account 
of  Harold's  suit  and  how  they  had  decided  to  wait 
with  the  firm  hope  of  such  an  ending  as  Judith  and 
Dan  had  found.  Madge  told  about  Harold's  first  ad- 
vances, of  their  struggle  of  hearts  through  the  en- 
suing time,  of  the  clash  of  their  differing  training, 
and  of  the  attempt  that  they  were  now  to  make  to 
remedy  the  mistakes  of  the  past.  Judith  described 


402      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

her  childhood  romance  with  Dan,  her  later  loneliness, 
her  joy  at  meeting  again  her  former  playmate;  and 
she  told  how  Dan  and  she  had  finally  found,  under  the 
incrustations  that  the  years  had  left,  the  old  sym- 
pathy, the  old  understanding,  and,  broadened,  deep- 
ened, and  glorified,  the  old  love. 

§  5.  It  was  decided  that  Judith's  wedding  should 
take  place,  quietly,  in  the  Giddey  flat  to  which,  pen- 
sioned now  by  his  former  employers,  Gideon  was  al- 
most wholly  confined.  Judith's  uncle  Billy — that  uncle 
with  whom  Dan  had  once  seen  the  scarlet  Mildred 
Maynard — had  died  within  the  year,  and  her  brother, 
this  uncle's  namesake,  was  her  only  surviving  immedi- 
ate relative ;  but  the  brother  was  with  his  regiment  in 
the  Philippines,  so  that  none  of  her  near  kin  could 
be  present  when  she  should  cease  to  be  Judith  Kent 
and  become  Mrs.  Daniel  Webster  Barnes.  Dan,  for 
his  part,  wanted  nobody  there  from  Americus,  save 
his  mother,  and  he  wrote  of  his  engagement  as  none 
can  write  except  an  engaged  son  describing  his  sweet- 
heart to  a  mother  whom  he  loves. 

Mrs.  Barnes  replied  by  two  letters  and  a  wedding 
present.  The  wedding  present  was  a  set  of  soft 
woollen  blankets  and  the  silver  knives,  forks,  and 
spoons  that  the  employees  of  the  Elm  Avenue  shop 
had  presented  to  Tom  Barnes  when  he  celebrated  his 
silver  wedding  anniversary.  The  letter  to  Judith 
was  careful,  restrained,  affectionate,  and  that  to  Dan 
was  restrained  and  sweet. 

So  at  last  Dan  took  a  two  weeks'  leave  of  absence 
from  the  Immutable  Insurance  Company,  and  went  at 
once  to  Americus,  and  brought  his  timid  mother  back 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      403 

with  him  within  twenty-four  hours,  her  luggage  con- 
sisting of  an  old  valise  and  a  sewing-bag,  and  finally 
presented  himself  at  the  Giddey  flat  ready  for  the 
ceremony,  with  Mrs.  Barnes  upon  his  arm  and  pride 
and  happiness  in  his  heart. 

If  the  conventional  man  can  at  times  rise  above 
his  unconventional  brother  in  unconventionality,  so 
can  that  brother,  when  he  gives  his  heart  to  it,  be 
more  conventional  than  convention.  Thus  Giddey, 
who  disapproved  of  weddings,  wheedled  into  making 
an  exception  in  favor  of  this  one,  bolted,  for  one  day, 
the  entire  conventional  code.  The  little  parlor  was 
hung  with  smilax,  arranged  under  his  personal  super- 
vision; white  roses  were  strewn  over  the  tops  of  the 
bookcases;  a  green  canopy  had  been  built  for  the 
ceremony  before  those  shelves  that  held  their  owner's 
best  loved  and  most  radical  volumes,  including  the 
"  Immoralite  du  Manage  "  and  all  of  Havelock  El- 
lis' great  work  that  had  then  been  published.  Gid- 
eon, having  long  ago  forgiven  Dan's  desertion  of 
him,  had  presented  Judith  and  Dan  with  a  cherished 
copy  of  Kropotkin's  "  Conquest  of  Bread,"  with  pen- 
cil annotations  in  his  own  hand,  and,  having  passed 
the  night  in  getting  his  books  back  into  their  places, 
he  had,  that  morning,  not  paused  to  consult  and  leave 
scattered  more  than  a  dozen  or  fifteen. 

Now,  in  a  flicker  of  returned  vigor,  but  deafer  than 
ever,  he  pottered  ceaselessly  about  the  suite.  His  bald 
head  gleamed;  his  sharp  eyes  peered;  the  pointed 
wisps  of  gray  hair  above  his  ears  seemed  to  quiver 
with  benevolent  excitement.  He  wore  a  white  waist- 
coat, which  he  had  forgotten  to  finish  buttoning;  it 
seemed  possible  for  him  completely  to  revolve  inside 


4o4      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

his  clothes  without  moving  those  garments,  and  he 
dodged  almost  nimbly,  making  voluble  comments  in 
a  shrill  voice,  from  the  small  room  in  which  Madge 
was  dressing  Judith,  to  that  in  which  the  wedding- 
breakfast  was  being  prepared,  and  thence  to  the  front 
door  to  welcome  the  guests. 

Of  these  there  were  not  many.  First,  if  guest  he 
may  be  called,  came  a  clergyman,  to  whose  offices 
Judith  had  been  persuaded  to  consent  out  of  deference 
to  the  prejudices  of  Mrs.  Barnes.  Then,  portly  and 
platitudinous,  Mr.  Edward  Quimby  Richardson,  pre- 
ceded the  day  before  by  a  silver  fish-set,  accompanied 
now  by  his  Louis  Philippe  whiskers  and  his  unvary- 
ing carnation,  but  not  followed  by  his  wife,  who 
could  scarcely  have  been  expected.  On  the  heels  of 
these  came  two  or  three  men  from  O'Neill  &  Silver- 
stone's  and  the  Immutable  Insurance  Company,  all 
stiff  in  their  manner  and  loose  in  their  allusions;  sev- 
eral reporters,  easy  men  and  women,  from  Judith's 
paper,  and  some  of  the  members  of  Madge's  club, 
who  were  doing  their  best  to  appear  reconciled  to 
the  occasion.  Since  his  venture  in  Suburban  Traction, 
Dan  had  not  renewed  his  friendship  with  Lysander 
Fry,  and  so  Snagsie's  presence  ha^l  not  been  so  much 
as  suggested.  Twigg,  it  had  been  decided,  should 
not  be  asked. 

Harold,  in  a  frock-coat  that  he  seemed  to  have 
been  born  in,  his  cheeks  flushed  and  his  eyes  bright, 
hurried  down  the  hall,  knocked  at  Madge's  door,  and 
called  that  dark  and  grave  young  person  from  her 
attentions  to  Jduith. 

"  I  say,"  he  whispered,  "  I've  got  the  greatest 
scheme !  Nobody's  ever  done  it  before — not  once !  " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      405 

"  What,"  asked  Madge,  "  are  you  talking  about?  " 

He  explained.  Dan  and  Judith  were  to  leave  the 
house  in  a  cab,  and  Harold  had  devised  an  ingenious 
contrivance  that,  attached  to  the  rear  axle  of  the  cab, 
would  ring  a  bar  from  the  Mendelssohn  Wedding 
March  with  every  revolution  of  the  wheels. 

But  the  announcement  of  Harold's  plan  made  it 
Madge's  turn  to  flush,  and  she  flushed  with  anger. 

"  Don't  dare  to  attach  that  to  the  carriage,"  she 
ordered. 

"  Eh?  "  gasped  Harold.  His  face  fell.  "  Oh,  all 
right,"  he  reluctantly  granted,  "  if  you  feel  that  way 
about  it.  I  suppose  you  think  it  foolish." 

"  I  think  it  immoral,"  Madge  retorted,  and  re- 
tired again  to  Judith. 

§  6.  Mrs.  Barnes,  the  thin  fingers  of  her  large 
hands  intertwining  nervously,  hovered  in  the  library, 
now  replying,  in  tones  so  low  that  he  never  heard  her, 
to  salutations  flung  her  by  the  ever-passing  Giddey, 
and  between  whiles  trying  to  keep  up  a  frightened 
conversation  with  the  patronizing  Mr.  Richardson. 
She  looked  frail,  but  almost  beautiful,  in  a  rustling 
black  silk  dress  and  a  bit  of  old  lace  at  her  thin  throat, 
her  gray  hair  brushed  smooth,  patient  submission  fill- 
ing her  faded  blue  eyes.  She  was  speaking  when  she 
fancied  that  she  had  to  speak,  and  she  was  thinking 
of  another  wedding,  long  ago. 

Presently  Madge,  her  olive  cheeks  still  flushed, 
came  into  the  parlor,  and  led  Mrs.  Barnes  thence  to 
the  room  where  Judith,  in  a  quiet  traveling  suit, 
waited  with  her  face  a  little  pale  and  her  brown  eyes 
serious. 


4o6      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

They  had  met  on  the  arrival  of  Dan's  mother  in 
New  York,  but  now,  as  then,  the  older  woman  ad- 
vanced and  put  her  hesitant  arms  about  the  girl  that 
was  to  marry  Danny  Barnes.  They  kissed. 

"  I  was  just  remembering  my  own  wedding,"  said 
Mrs.  Barnes,  "  an'  then  I  come  to  think  of  your 
mother's,  Judith.  ...  It  was  close  after  mine 
.  .  .  an'  they  both  seem  a  long  time  ago.  Your 
mother  was  a  beautiful  bride,  dear." 

Judith's  eyes  dimmed. 

"  You  are  very  kind,"  she  answered. 

"  An'  you  were  always  a  nice  little  girl,"  said 
Sarah  Barnes.  "  An'  now  you  look  like  such  a  good 

woman.  You'll — you  will "  She  blushed  and 

hesitated  like  a  schoolgirl. 

"  Yes,"  said  Judith,  understandingly.  "  I  will  be 
good  to  him.  I  will." 

The  old  lady  bent  her  head. 

"  Thank  you,"  she  said.  "  That  was  what 

He — he's  all  I  got  left.  An'  he  always  was  such  a 
well-behaved  boy,  an'  we  tried  to  bring  him  up  right." 

§  7.  In  Gideon's  bedroom,  Harold  was  pulling  at 
Dan's  arm. 

"Come  on!  Come  on,  now!"  he  said.  "The 
seconds  are  all  in  the  ring,  and  the  referee  is  wait- 
ing." 

Dan,  dressed  with  scrupulous  correctness,  stood 
before  the  miniature  mirror,  bestowing,  for  the  tenth 
time,  the  last  touches  to  his  tie. 

"  Yes,  yes,"  he  said ;  "  that's  all  right.    I'm  ready." 

"  Then  come  on." 

"  I  will,  in  a  second.    Is  this  tie  all  right?  " 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      407 

"  It's  perfect.     Come  on,  now." 

"  And  you're  sure  that  tailor  hasn't  made  this  corn- 
founded  frock-coat  too  tight  between  the  shoulders?  " 

"  Sure  I'm  sure." 

"  I  gave  you  that  return  ticket  for  mother?  " 

4  Yes.  I'll  go  with  her  as  far  as  Philadelphia  and 
see  her  safe  on  the  Doncaster  train." 

"  All  right.    You  have  the  ring?  " 

'  You've  asked  me  that  before !  It's  here  in  my 
waistcoat  pocket.  Come  along  to  the  sacrifice — and 
good  luck!  " 

Harold  dragged  Dan  forth,  brought  him  into  the 
library,  and  planted  him  before  the  minister,  under 
the  improvised  bower,  facing  the  radical  volumes  and 
between  the  rows  of  smiling  guests.  Then  this  best- 
man  drew  to  one  side,  and  the  entire  company  waited, 
Dan  white  with  expectancy,  Harold  pink  from  his 
exertions. 

§  8.  It  seemed  to  Dan  that  he  waited  for  hours. 
He  saw  the  smirking  clerks,  the  whispering  news- 
paper people.  He  saw  the  face  of  his  mother  with  her 
anxious  eyes.  .  .  . 

Then,  suddenly,  Judith  stood  beside  him:  Judith 
straight,  gracious,  her  chin  high,  the  chestnut  hair 
lightly  drawn  away  from  her  pure  forehead,  and  her 
big  brown  eyes  sober  and  sincere. 

The  service  had  begun.    .    .    . 

His  own  responses  Dan  did  not  hear;  but  he  heard 
Judith's  firm  and  true.  Only  once  was  there  a  break  in 
her  voice,  and  that  impelled  Dan  to  recollection.  He 
recalled  the  far-off  day  when  he  had  sat  on  a 
meadow  fence-rail  with  a  barefoot  girl,  and  they  made 


4o8      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

a  wager  of  ten  coppers  against  a  kiss,  and  there  was 
that  same  queer  break  in  her  voice  when,  with  wart- 
marked  fingers,  he  touched  her  sunburnt  hand,  and 
she  asked  him : 

"  Do— do  you  like  me,  Dan?  " 

He  felt  ashamed  of  his  inability  to  remember  who 
had  won  the  bet.  .  .  . 

And  then,  quite  suddenly,  the  service  was  over. 
People,  grinning  people,  crowded  forward,  making 
inane  jokes  and  offering  commonplace  congratula- 
tions. He  was  standing  beside  his  handsome  com- 
panion, a  new  air  of  protection  on  his  broad 
shoulders,  receiving  the  jokes  and  the  congratulations 
as  neither  inane  nor  commonplace,  with  a  bright  light 
in  his  blue  eyes  and  a  confident  smile.  Dan  was  mar- 
ried. 

Pressing  Judith's  hand  openly  and  unashamed — it 
was  the  first  time  in  his  life  that  he  had  the  right 
publicly  to  own  to  love — he  took  her  to  the  dining- 
room  where  the  wedding  breakfast  was  served. 

They  sat  down.  There  was  champagne.  There 
were  even  speeches. 

Mr.  Richardson  spoke  at  free  length,  referring  to 
the  wedding  as  "  nuptials,"  to  Dan  as  "  a  Benedick," 
to  Judith  as  "  this  fair  young  bride,"  and  concluding 
with  advice  to  "  the  happy  pair  "  to  remember  that 
a  penny  saved  is  a  penny  earned,  and  that,  as  his  long 
and  not  unsuccessful  career  had  revealed  to  his  satis- 
faction, the  best  physicians  are  Dr.  Diet,  Dr.  Quiet, 
and  Dr.  Merryman.  Harold  followed  his  father  by 
proposing  the  health  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dan  Barnes  in 
epigram  and  drinking  it  in  champagne.  And  Gid- 
eon, tottering  to  his  legs,  shocked  everybody  save  his 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      409 

daughter  and  Judith,  by  a  general  tirade  against  the 
whole  institution  of  marriage. 

Came  the  moment  of  departure.  Thanks  to 
Madge's  efforts,  Dan  got  the  luggage  safely  down- 
stairs and  on  the  waiting  cab.  He  returned  and, 
clasping  Judith's  hand,  led  her  to  his  mother. 

"  Well,  mother,"  he  said. 

"  Well,  Danny,"  said  his  mother. 

"  I  guess  we'd  better  be  starting." 

"  I  guess  you  had,  Danny." 

He  bent  and  kissed  her  soft  cheek.  Judith  kissed 
her. 

"  What,"  he  asked  proudly,  "  do  you  think  of  My 
Wife?" 

The  little  old  lady,  remembering  her  husband's 
plans  for  his  son,  trembling  from  the  hurry  of  this 
event,  from  the  bustle  of  the  city,  and  from  the  mem- 
ories of  her  own  marriage,  was  thinking: 

"  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  what's  come  over  the 
young  folks  nowadays.  He  ought  to  Ve  made  a 
better  match — in  a  money  way.  Still,  she's  a  nice 
girl,  an'  Dan's  a  good  man.  How  could  he  help 
bein'  ?  We  certainly  brought  him  up  right,  Tom  an' 
me.  We  trained  him  clean — in  the  way  he  should 
go.  We  did  our  best.  .  .  .  She's  a  nice  girl.  But 
she's  not  just  what  I  expected.  .  .  .  Seems  to  me 
people  are  different  from  when  I  was  young." 

But  then,  realizing  the  import  of  her  son's  ques- 
tion, Sarafi  Barnes  looked  up  at  her  son's  wife. 

"  I'm  glad  you've  married  a  good  woman,  Dan," 
she  said.  "  Your  father  always  wanted  you  should." 

§  9.     They  ran  down  the  stairs,  Dan  and  Judith, 

X 


4io      THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE 

pursued  by  the  shouting  clerks  and  reporters.  They 
got  into  the  cab,  under  a  Niagara  of  rice  and  confetti, 
and  Dan  banged  the  door,  and  they  drove  away. 

As  the  cab  bounced  through  the  city  streets,  he 
looked  at  her  beside  him,  tall,  brown,  and  radiant. 
He  remembered  again  how  he  had  resolved  to  fight 
the  City  and  wring  gold  from  its  throat.  That  was 
over,  but  he  did  not  care,  for  he  remembered  some- 
thing better:  he  remembered  his  first  visions  of  real 
Love.  His  secrecies  had  not  touched  that  secret;  the 
actions  that  he  had  considered  foul  even  while  he 
committed  them  had  not  soiled  it;  served,  if  they  af- 
fected it  at  all,  to  make  it  but  the  purer  and  more 
desirable.  Always  it  had  been  something  so  fine  and 
unreal  that  Judith  herself  was  but  the  token  of  it: 
it  was  perfection,  completion;  it  stood  above  the  dust 
and  noise  of  life  in  the  pure  air  and  clean  silence. 

He  could  not  take  his  eyes  from  Judith,  from  the 
splendid  form  beside  him.  Did  he  deserve  her?  Yes, 
somehow  he  must  deserve  her.  He  felt  again  the 
something  more  than  he  could  understand  that  drew 
him  to  her.  Yet  he  was  sure  of  the  justice  of  life. 
Somehow  it  must  be  that  he  deserved  her. 

"  Judith !  "  he  whispered. 

She  raised  her  face  to  his,  her  eyes  wide. 

"  You  will  be  good  to  me?  "  she  asked,  as  she  had 
asked  it  on  that  night  when  he  first  told  her  that  he 
loved  her. 

"  Forever  and  forever,"  he  swore. 

§  10.  That  was  in  the  four-wheeler  in  New  York 
at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  At  ten  o'clock  that 
evening  in  their  hotel-room  in  Boston,  Dan  was  facing 


THE  SENTENCE  OF  SILENCE      411 

his  wife  with  horror  on  his  white  lips  and  hatred  in 
his  voice. 

"What  have  you  been?"  he  was  demanding. 
"  Tell  me  the  truth.  By  God,  don't  you  dare  to  lie 
to  me!  What  have  you  been?" 

And  Judith,  his  wife,  his  mate,  was  looking  up  at 
him  with  puzzled  wonderment  and  fear. 

"  I  thought  you  knew,"  she  was  saying;  "  I  told 
you;  I  thought  you  understood.  What  have  I  been? 
Nothing  that  you've  not  been.  What  right  have  you 
to  ask?" 


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